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  johnpi 8:47 pm on July 7, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bloggers and journalists (13), blogging (50), blogosphere (9), internet (46), Internet vs print media, journalism (44)

  Studies in arrogance.

  Barry Diller’s perspective on blogging typifies the response of many a complacent media executive to the rise of blogging, according to Scott Rosenberg.

  “Self-publishing by someone of average talent is not very interesting,” he told The Economist in 2006. “Talent is the new limited resource.” At a technology conference that year, he declared, “There’s just not that much talent in the world, and talent almost always outs.”

  Diller’s view echoes that of avowedly elitist polemics like Andrew Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur.” According to this perspective, talent is a resource of fixed supply. The existing institutions of the publishing and broadcast world are already doing an efficient and thorough job of finding all that talent and giving it a platform. And all this other stuff that’s spewing forth from the Web’s profusion of blogs and podcasts and videos? It’s just dross that obscures the real talent’s output.

  Real Nietzschian supermen in the fields of journalism and political and social commentary don’t float to the top while maintaining a presence in the blogosphere, so if you’re ambitious you better get out of this guy’s cone of condescension and ditch the blogging.

  In related news, Dan Froomkin, recently fired columnist for the Washington Post has been hired to be the Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief.

   

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  johnpi 6:09 pm on June 24, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bloggers (59), bloggers and journalists (13), Internet vs print media, journalists (17)

  CNN cops anti-blogger attitude, runs story summary bar during Nico Pitney interview: “A blogger gets press room Q & A. So what?”

   
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  johnpi 7:46 am on May 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: blogs (23), Internet vs print media

  The myth of the parasitical bloggers.

  Glenn Greenwald writes:

  One of the favorite accusations that many journalists spout, especially now that they’re searching for reasons why newspapers and print magazines are dying, is that bloggers and other online writers are “parasites” on their work — that their organizations bear the cost of producing content and others (bloggers and companies such as Google) then unfairly exploit it for free.

  The reality has always been far more mixed than that, and the relationship far more symbiotic than parasitical. Especially now that online traffic is such an important part of the business model of newspapers and print magazines, traffic generated by links from online venues and bloggers is of great value to them. That’s why they engage in substantial promotional activities to encourage bloggers to link to and write about what they produce. Beyond that, it is also very common — as the Dowd/Marshall episode illustrates — for traditional media outlets and establishment journalists to use and even copy content produced online and then present it as their own, typically without credit. Many, many reporters, television news producers and the like read online political commentary and blogs and routinely take things they find there.

  Why blog, and why you should participate:

  It’s difficult to quantify, but a large percentage of political reporters, editors, television news producers, and on-air pundits read political blogs or other online venues now. Many do so precisely because blogs are a prime source for their story ideas. Contrary to the myth perpetrated by establishment media outlets, there is substantial original reporting, original analysis and the like that takes place on blogs. That’s precisely why so many journalists, editors and segment producers read them.

   
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  johnpi 9:00 pm on May 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Hedayah Darwish (2), Internet vs print media, Kul Al-Watan (2), retaliation against bloggers (13), retaliation against journalists (9), saudi arabia (135)

  Hedayah Darwish, a Saudi female reporter and founder of the first daily newspaper in the Gulf, and who started working in journalism over 20 years ago, spoke at a Arab media forum in Kuwait last month, where she said she replaced print journalism with electronic journalism in 2003.

  “Electronic journalism is the future of journalism…it is now time to let our voice cross the geographical boundaries and reach the entire universe. This can only be done through online journalism.”

  No wonder Saudi Arabian print journalists are attempting to destroy her reputation and career.

   
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  johnpi 9:24 pm on May 2, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: alcohol abuse (2), censorship (44), drug abuse (2), Faux Feminist Watch (8), Faux Journalist Watch (8), Hedayah Darwish (2), Internet vs print media, Kul Al-Watan (2), retaliation against bloggers (13), retaliation against journalists (9), saudi arabia (135), sexual harassment (8), women's rights (32)

  A Saudi Arabian blogger has published an expose about women reporters in that country suffering sexual harassment and having to sleep with their bosses to keep jobs and get promotions. The blogger, Hedayah Darwish, also reports that Saudi journalists sometimes resort to using drugs and alcohol. As most any reporter will tell you, use and abuse of substances is sadly far more common than it should be among those in that profession due to the stress and the sometimes inhuman demands that come with the job, so this is not a wild report.

  Now however, it seems the bosses and editors she exposed are utilizing the Saudi Journalists Association to destroy her, with 13 female journalists smearing Darwish and calling for a government crackdown and new round of censorship of bloggers and e-newspapers that publish “content that creates social harm and negative images.” (The gender of the accusers is important because they claim Darwish impugned female journalists only, but Darwish seems to deny that in the Arab News article linked above.) The attack on Darwish is a trojan horse that may allow the traditional print journalists of Saudi Arabia, who operate under more restrictive censorship rules than their online brothers, to cut out the competition by prompting a government over-reaction that squashes access to Internet information sources in that country.

  Aside from that larger issue, the most important journalistic question that arises out of the story is this: Is the report accurate? If the story is accurate then there is no issue, since the truth should be the highest value as a standard of personal, professional, societal and even religious integrity. “Social harm” and “negative images” should be secondary considerations to the truth in a country that claims the Quran for its constitution.

  If Darwish’s story contained inaccuracies, the Saudi journalists should have published reports that corrected the inaccuracies and set the record straight. Instead they acted like Stalinist toadies and called for a full-on government slam-down on Internet publishers. So I’m creating a new tag here at TalkIslam “Faux Journalist Watch” to go with the “Faux Feminist Watch”, both of which seem to apply to this story.