Posts Tagged ‘journalism’

Note: I originally published this on my Tumblr, which focuses on journalism, but thought I’d post it over here, too.

A piece in the Toronto Standard today this week demands more accountability for online news. Amelia Schonbek uses CBC’s Rob Ford called 911 and used the F-bomb story (from almost two months ago) as a way to illustrate her point that online news is not accountable enough to its readers.

(F)ew have discussed a potentially more serious issue: the manner in which CBC.ca published and revised its reporting as the story developed. … The CBC’s original story was published at 5:18 a.m. on October 27. Over the course of the day, it went through several updates. By the time it was last updated, after 9 p.m. the same night, it had become a completely different piece—new information had been added, old information had disappeared, and it even had a different headline.

Schonbek is quick to point out many newspapers often do this, but she writes this is wrong because:

There was no way for anyone to revisit and assess the original content. It was made invisible.

I don’t know that I buy that. I can’t turn back the clock to compare the two stories, but I do believe the CBC stood by its story. There was no correction, no retraction. If anything, the CBC probably moved the story forward by adding Ford’s apology and denial, as well as the comments made by his brother, Doug Ford. To me, this is all good reporting and what the story has become.

It’s important to remember that with any story, the story that is posted at 5:18 a.m. is bound to change throughout the day into something different by 9 p.m.

Schonbek does propose changes to how online news is posted to make it more “transparent” to its readers:

Newspapers could, for instance, implement a tab system: at every URL, a reader would be able to click through different versions of the story in different tabs, each of which would be time-stamped. The most recent version would appear on top, but if readers wanted to reference past reporting, they could simply flick through the tabs and compare versions.

While an interesting idea, I don’t think this is at all practical. Online news consumers, for the most part, would never read all that content, they just don’t care that much.

The biggest question I have after reading this piece, and other pieces like it, is: Why do we not criticize 24 hour news stations, such as CNN, in the same way we criticize online news?

In her piece, Schonbek also references how (some) of the media killed Gabrielle Giffords back in January. Fair enough, but it wasn’t just online news that got that wrong, CNN also reported the congresswoman had been killed. CNN even said it had confirmed it “with CNN sources.” Now, whether CNN’s sources were tweets from NPR and Reuters remains to be seen, but CNN still killed the congresswoman. And then, she was brought back to life and no one demonized the news network for their misreporting.

(I’m not saying online news reports should not correct errors, or point out to readers when they change something that was wrong in their copy, but I do not believe that to be the case here. As far as I know, CBC continues to stand by their original story.)

News networks are often filled with erroneous reports throughout the day as a story develops because, well, a story is developing. If the Internet did not exist, then that CBC story would have been read on air first thing in the morning, then changed, amended and moved forward as the day went on. One would assume the story you would hear on the radio on your way into work would be nothing near what you’d hear on the way home.

Where is the demand for accountability with 24-hour news networks? Why are we demanding online news be held to a higher standard than the rest?

Why don’t creative young writers care if they get paid?

That’s the headline on a column by Russell Smith in The Globe and Mail, where he laments that young writers, like me, don’t care if they get paid for their work, unlike old writers, like him.

The column stems from a “recurring argument” he has with young writers about why they choose to write for publications, such as The Huffington Post, where they are not paid for their work. They claim they do it to further their brand, while Smith’s generation (the older generation), would never imagine writing something for free — let alone to something like HuffPo that can afford to pay its writers.

He writes:

There now exists an entire generation of intelligent people who have grown up without any expectation of compensation for imaginative work.

As a young writer, I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Nor do I believe that I contently give away my creative work for free without getting anything back out of it.

As someone under the age of 30, I can only assume I am the demographic Smith is speaking about. I wish he were as right about me as he thinks he is.

I began writing for newspapers at 17, and I was paid for every word I wrote. Sometimes I was paid too little for the amount of work I put into a story, other times too much, but I was paid.

When I moved to a small town, the weekly papers there were happy to have me contribute, but I didn’t get paid from them until I began working as a staff reporter at one of them. Weekly papers don’t have the budget for freelance. (Or at least not the ones in my small town.) Nor should they. After all, being a community paper means the community contributes. Paying every citizen who contributed to a small town weekly paper would bankrupt it pretty fast, I would guess.

When I moved to Toronto, I knew I’d have to take some lumps to make it. I worked for free at a website here and there, volunteered for my school paper for two out of three years, and wrote stories and blog posts when I worked at a national paper that I considered, for the most part, part of my job as a sports copy editor.

Did I make a willing decision not to get paid for my work? I wouldn’t say that. But I do have this blog. And no one, not even Google Ad Sense, is paying for me to write this blog post.

Perhaps then Smith is right. I’m just too willing to give away my creative content, but then I look at what I got out of all that giving away and suddenly things aren’t as black and white.

I got exposure. I got experience. I got to interview celebrities and cover stories and beats I love. I got to find my voice.

And yes, Smith addresses all this:

Somehow, they know, money will come in from another source. They can get famous fast this way, and it’s gratifying to have a huge audience.

That’s right, I do what I do to get famous. And I’m pretty famous, in case you couldn’t tell. (I mean, more than 1,000 people follow me on Twitter.)

Smith explains in his day, reporters worked their way up:

We old farts did that tiring reporting/interviewing stuff for years before we were allowed to write our opinions on things.

Well, people still work their way up, for the most part. The whole getting-famous-for-a-blog-or-something-else-you-did-for-free is prettty rare.

Another difference between the two generations?

I still don’t even aspire to this ideal of not being edited; not being edited doesn’t seem like a benefit to me. I still have a deep-rooted (and unjustified) instinct telling me that something published has value only if it has been commissioned by someone else.

I prefer being edited. I know this blog is not perfect because I wrote it and no one proofed it. I’m not an expert writer on my own, I know that (and so do my editors). Does something published only have value if commissioned by someone else? I say no. There’s lots of great ideas out there, and some of them come from reporters themselves.

Should the Huffington Post pay? Maybe, but if you’re happy getting the kind of exposure you would get writing for a site like that, then there’s no need to complain.

Now, if you’d excuse me, I’ve got to get back to some writing I’m getting paid for.

In March, I blogged in response to a column by The Globe and Mail‘s Margaret Wente saying that all bloggers are male (and she’s obviously right; there are no female bloggers out there).

This weekend, Wente once again tried her old-media hand at new media. And, once again, Wente failed in a spectacular fashion.

In “You’re really not that interesting, and neither am I,” Wente talks about how social media (specifically Facebook, with a dash of Twitter thrown in) is utterly ridiculous and that she doesn’t see what the point is. Now Wente’s anti-Twitter stance is no surprise (she hasn’t tweeted from her account since March of 2009).

It’s not that Wente hasn’t tried this whole Facebook-thing (because she says it would be snobby to turn her nose up at something she has no clue about):

I signed up and began friending anyone who asked. I now have 147 friends, almost none of whom I actually know. Most seem very nice. Their tastes and activities are as ordinary as my own. I have 64 unanswered messages, four unreturned pokes and 28 new friend requests. I feel incredibly popular, but also guilty, because I’m not a very good friend. I never tell them anything about myself. I haven’t even put my picture on my Facebook page. I simply don’t believe I’m all that interesting to anyone but me. Besides, it’s none of their business.

Hmm. Well, assuming of the five Margaret Wente’s I found on Facebook this one is actually her, then (like many other people on social media), Wente inflated her friends count. She really has 103.

And on Twitter, of which Wente is such an avid user, she says:

Tweeting strikes me as an even more pointless waste of time. The answer to “What are you doing?” tends to be utterly inane…

My chief problem with Wente’s complaints about social media is that they are so 2006. Really.

I have over 100 friends on Facebook, which I have cut down by choice, I could have more. But I’ve found it’s more rewarding for me to be friends with people on Facebook I actually interact with.

The same goes on Twitter, I follow under 200 people and only follow those who interest me. I’m not interested in the inane status updates. And the people who post those? They tend not to have too many friends/followers either. It’s not just you, Margaret who is not interested in reading those — no one is.

Social media is just that — social. It’s about a discussion, about seeing things in a new light. Wente seems to have a very old-media approach to social media. She says it herself — she doesn’t interact with her “friends” on her Facebook, she watches them interact. She prefers to tell people what to think through her column and not participate in the discussion that results from that.

Other journalists are not like this. There are a number of Canadian journalists and columnists who are active on Twitter, discussing with their readers and not sitting alone knowing they are right and everyone else is wrong. This is the journalism of the future. This is what will save our industry.

And if social media is such a waste of time, I have one question for Margaret Wente: Why is that Facebook like button above your article? Why can I click a button to easily tweet a link to it to everyone in my network?

Why, if my status updates are so inane and boring, would anyone ever want to read anything I recommend on social media? (Even if that update is a link to your article.)

You know you’ve been neglectful of your blog when you log in and have 271 spam comments waiting for you to plough through to make sure no legitimate comments have made their way there by accident.

It’s almost enough to make you sign out again.

But then I realized it’s been many months since my last “real” post, and over a month since my last Storify post.

My new job has kept me busy. It’s not an excuse, it’s the truth. I’ve been writing more there than I have professionally in years. It’s been exhilarating and I love every day. (You can read some of my stories here, here, here and here). A couple of them were even published in the “real” paper!

Needless to say, the first three months of my internship have been a blast.

I have also been doing a lot with Storify (you can see all my Storify posts here). Storify is  a nifty little social media curating tool that I’ve had a blast playing with. It may look like the lazy way of blogging, but it actually takes me more time to cultivate a Storify post than to actually write up a blog post. I just haven’t had anything worth writing about that’s more than a 140-character tweet (so if you really miss my lovely words, follow me over on Twitter and kick me over 500 followers!).

A few thoughts in a nutshell before I sign off:

• I read a post by Toronto Mike today about how Facebook and Twitter are killing blogs. I don’t think that’s true. I think blogging will always exist somehow. Twitter and Facebook have made it easier to make your thoughts known on any given subject immediately, but they don’t allow the space or time for analysis that blogs do. I have two Twitter feeds in my RSS feed, but dozens of blogs. If anything, blogging might go back to being a niche thing instead of something everyone does.
• So, you want to be a journalist?

Bill Doskoch blogged he’s the last person to share this video, so I thought I’d let him off the hook. There’s a lot of things this video does and says in under three minutes, which is why it works and why it was so popular online last week.

A few notes to the kids out there: Journalism is all kinds of things at all kinds of places. Not everyone makes it to the New York Times (or their version of that), but that doesn’t make your career any less important than those journalists that did. Oh, and get a subscription for pete’s sake! Support the survival of the industry you want to be in.

A few web shout-outs:

• The lovely Spydergrrl is up for a 2010 Canadian Weblog Award in the science, technology and Internet category!! Go Tanya! Check out her great blog if you haven’t already, and make sure to follow her on Twitter! If you’re a geek girl, she’s got you covered!
• Lizz Bryce (AKA @opinionatedlizz) had her first ever article published! So kudos to her! Can’t wait to meet her and a bunch of other tweeps at an upcoming Tweet-up!
• The wonderful Nick Taylor-Vaisey is the editor of Open File‘s Ottawa branch. Great guy, great cool news website, great news all around! All the best Nick! I know you’ll rock it!

I hope my last update comes sooner than this one. I’ll post before the new year with a round up of the year. Happy holidays all!

I used Storify to document the Twitter reaction to Pat Burns’ death tonight. It was interesting to see how people went from skepticism to acceptance in just under an hour.

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