Each day, in some form or another it comes up: newspapers are dying. The internet (more specifically, blogs) is killing them. There have been lively discussions about it here, and there, and everywhere.
Thanks to David Sirota, today I was lead to this piece, Product v. process journalism: The myth of perfection v. beta culture and much of it really resonated with me.
Online, the story, the reporting, the knowledge are never done and never perfect. That doesn't mean that we revel in imperfection, as is the implication of The Times' story - that we have no standards. It just means that we do journalism differently, because we can. We have our standards, too, and they include collaboration, transparency, letting readers into the process, and trying to say what we don't know when we publish - as caveats - rather than afterward - as corrections.
The problem with this tiresome, never-ending alleged war of blogs vs. MSM (Arrington attacks The Times) and MSM vs. blogs (The Times attacks Arrington) - (Mark Glaser scolded me for rising to The Times' bait - is that it blinds each tribe from learning from the other. Yes, there are standards worth saluting from classical journalism. But there are also new methods and opportunities to be learned online. No one owns journalists or its methods or standards.
Robert Picard, at The Media Business reminds us:
Many of the voices and opinions, however, misunderstand the nature of journalism. It is not business model; it is not a job; it is not a company; it is not an industry; it is not a form of media; it is not a distribution platform.
Instead, journalism is an activity. It is a body of practices by which information and knowledge is gathered, processed, and conveyed. The practices are influenced by the form of media and distribution platform, of course, as well as by financial arrangements that support the journalism. But one should not equate the two.
And lastly, Wendy at Ink-Drenched Kvetch has a great post today about all this too:
I've been occasionally sentimental at times about wanting to hold on to what I've known as a journalist. I still love print and at least try to pick up the Sunday paper along with subscriptions to several magazines. I cannot read with deep immersion online and probably never will. Like Nick Carr, I worry about the cognitive effects of lengthy periods of time spent online. And the obnoxious rantings of certain techno-utopians border on the asinine when they don't cross it.
Let the discussion continue. What do you think? Product or process?
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