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I broadly disagree; plenty of casual bloggers are excellent journalists (in fact some of those people are easily amongst what I would consider the top echelons
by ErrantX 16y ago
I broadly disagree; plenty of casual bloggers are excellent journalists (in fact some of those people are easily amongst what I would consider the top echelons of journalism). That said; such people are just natural talents, so I also broadly agree with her critique of bloggers.
But, I think Jolie is muddling Journalists together as a whole, when in my mind there are two very distinct types. One is the type she describes; the meticulously neutral, fact checking, source citing reporter who deals in news and events and "things that happen". This is a very hard job. Then you have the opinion writers; and that is even tougher because you have to be critical but fair, opinionated but balanced - and then you have to write really well to pull it off. A really good blogger can easily fit into this crowd without the training Jolie suggests :)
I can tell you how to tell Bloggers from Journalists; bloggers will write a post in a couple of hours and post it. Journalists will spend a day (or more) writing the same post. And though the subject/conclusion might be identical you can always tell the difference.
- jolie 16y agoI'm going to get into the more nuanced side of being a blogger AND a journalist in the very near future, but you're partially correct. When I first started news blogging, I was directly told by my editor (Richard MacManus) that my writing was, while perfectly correct, too dry/boring to get any kind of significant pageviews. He and Marshall Kirkpatrick taught me how to carefully interject analysis and heavily qualified opinion (which was always identified as such) into a blog post to make a kind of news/opinion hybrid. It's a delicate art, indeed. And a topic for a different post. =)
- ErrantX 16y agoThat's good to hear. I think journalism like your own is likely to become the saviour of the trade, as it were. Such rigorous writing is never given the time in print media. Hell; I wrote for a monthly that had ample time for fact checking but just didn't want to spend the money :(
- MaysonL 16y agoPlease: name some names. Your description of the ideal journalist is fairly good, but doesn't really tell us anything about the real world.
- jolie 16y agoNaming names amounts to either hero-worship or gossip/slander. I plan to go into more real-world application of these principles for digital media journalists soon, though. I've already started posting in that series, called "Be a Better Journo." Believe me, I would LOVE to call people out, and I can give a specific example for a good journo/blogger and a bad one for each of these 10 points.
- ErrantX 16y agoIf you're going to downvote at least have to courtesy to explain my error; always happy to hear my mistakes. :)