4 ms·

I think you're oversimplifying the trade of journalism and massively underselling the value and importance of it. WP isn't "the elites". They're journalists. T

I think you're oversimplifying the trade of journalism and massively underselling the value and importance of it. WP isn't "the elites". They're journalists. They have a trade, which is on a completely different plane and set of standards than a random blog.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hodder 8y ago
Some of it, particularly the funding for investigative journalism and research, is valuable and on a completely different plane of standards than (some) random blogs. Much of it however, is not.
coldtea 8y ago
>I think you're oversimplifying the trade of journalism and massively underselling the value and importance of it That's because I have about 15+ years experience with it (until relatively recently) from various roles (and family in the business). >They have a trade, which is on a completely different plane and set of standards than a random blog. From a random blog, yes. From a good blog, no. And there was no real training required in being a journalist (the same there is in engineering for example), anybody could become one (and even worse today) no matter how ignorant about the topic they cover. What little exists "school of journalism" style education used to laughed at by old school journalists (and not the worse ones either) -- and still doesn't make you an expert in politics, or tech, or whatever you get to cover. >WP isn't "the elites". They're journalists. Still the ten-percenters (or percenter wanna-bees), and all commingling with the elites and eating their crumbs.
- Veen 8y ago
  > And there was no real training required in being a journalist This is nonsense unless you think the only training of value happens in post-graduate degree programs. Journalists get a huge amount of on-the-job practical training.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    The problem with on-the-job training is that the quality of it is highly dependent on the workplace and the coworkers around you and the job in question. Just look at programming and software engineering. It takes very little to call yourself a programmer, and on-the-job training may or may not help at all.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    On the job journalistic training is (a) ad-hoc (b) training constrained to teach the motions and traditions of the trade -- not training on the things that you cover. Both good and bad journalists could be produced on the other end of it -- even on the same newspaper. Now consider on different, low quality, newspapers (e.g. on the job training on some gossip rag). Still, you get to call yourself a journalist, like someone who slaps together some shitty PHP code from Stack Overflow answers is a "programmer".
    - Veen 8y ago
      All true, but this isn’t a problem with on-the-job training. It’s a problem with all education. There are plenty of terrible professionals coming out of even well-regarded universities.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  > From a random blog, yes. From a good blog, no. It's perhaps also worth noting that blogs and professional journalism aren't actually distinct anymore. At one end, news organizations started hosting blogs under their main domains, often not clearly identified as such. The bloggers get big-name prestige and the appearance of being contracted journalists, the news orgs get free content and click-attracting stories that can be disclaimed if they're inaccurate or improper. At the other end, Vice News has multiple Peadbody awards. Emptywheel exists. Notable, award-winning journalists like Marcy Wheeler and Nate Thayer publish on their own sites, without editors, then link up with news orgs later to publish books or take contracts for specific stories. (And, yeah, sometimes those people break completely with journalistic practice. Wheeler outed a source, then gave a detailed account of her ethical justification. Thayer may or may not be completely off the deep end.) Neither of them works for a major outlet, but both of have worked for major outlets, so it's hardly clear how to score either the positive or negative aspects of that. Comparing the Washington Post to a blog is hard to do, because there's no particular guarantee that the two are on different sites, or by different authors.
  - nickelcitymario 8y ago
    > sometimes those people break completely with journalistic practice. This may be the first real argument I've seen for the difference between blogging and journalism. Blogging is one person's opinion or account of a topic. Journalism is one person's opinion or account of a topic, as filtered, reviewed, revised, challenged, fact-checked, and approved by an organization. It's reasonable to expect an individual to be able to decide whether they trust a handful of news organizations. If the NYT repeatedly breaks my trust, I can remove them from my reading list. But until then, I trust that the NYT to vet their writers. So I trust the authors published on nytimes.com without knowing a thing about them, because I trust the NYT. (Likewise, if I mistrust the org, I'll mistrust the contributors. Hello there, Fox News.) It's not reasonable to expect individuals to be able to decide how much they trust each individual writer. I don't even know how many writers I read on a daily basis. When it's a blogger, I take it with a grain of salt unless it's someone I read so often that I've come to trust them. (Hello, Jason Kottke.) This doesn't make blogging inferior to journalism. I probably get more value from blogs than news sites on the regular. But I do think it's a valid distinction to take into account.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

hodder 8y ago

Some of it, particularly the funding for investigative journalism and research, is valuable and on a completely different plane of standards than (some) random blogs. Much of it however, is not.

coldtea 8y ago

>I think you're oversimplifying the trade of journalism and massively underselling the value and importance of it That's because I have about 15+ years experience with it (until relatively recently) from various roles (and family in the business). >They have a trade, which is on a completely different plane and set of standards than a random blog. From a random blog, yes. From a good blog, no. And there was no real training required in being a journalist (the same there is in engineering for example), anybody could become one (and even worse today) no matter how ignorant about the topic they cover. What little exists "school of journalism" style education used to laughed at by old school journalists (and not the worse ones either) -- and still doesn't make you an expert in politics, or tech, or whatever you get to cover. >WP isn't "the elites". They're journalists. Still the ten-percenters (or percenter wanna-bees), and all commingling with the elites and eating their crumbs.

Veen 8y ago
> And there was no real training required in being a journalist This is nonsense unless you think the only training of value happens in post-graduate degree programs. Journalists get a huge amount of on-the-job practical training.
- kbenson 8y ago
  The problem with on-the-job training is that the quality of it is highly dependent on the workplace and the coworkers around you and the job in question. Just look at programming and software engineering. It takes very little to call yourself a programmer, and on-the-job training may or may not help at all.
- coldtea 8y ago
  On the job journalistic training is (a) ad-hoc (b) training constrained to teach the motions and traditions of the trade -- not training on the things that you cover. Both good and bad journalists could be produced on the other end of it -- even on the same newspaper. Now consider on different, low quality, newspapers (e.g. on the job training on some gossip rag). Still, you get to call yourself a journalist, like someone who slaps together some shitty PHP code from Stack Overflow answers is a "programmer".
  - Veen 8y ago
    All true, but this isn’t a problem with on-the-job training. It’s a problem with all education. There are plenty of terrible professionals coming out of even well-regarded universities.
Bartweiss 8y ago
> From a random blog, yes. From a good blog, no. It's perhaps also worth noting that blogs and professional journalism aren't actually distinct anymore. At one end, news organizations started hosting blogs under their main domains, often not clearly identified as such. The bloggers get big-name prestige and the appearance of being contracted journalists, the news orgs get free content and click-attracting stories that can be disclaimed if they're inaccurate or improper. At the other end, Vice News has multiple Peadbody awards. Emptywheel exists. Notable, award-winning journalists like Marcy Wheeler and Nate Thayer publish on their own sites, without editors, then link up with news orgs later to publish books or take contracts for specific stories. (And, yeah, sometimes those people break completely with journalistic practice. Wheeler outed a source, then gave a detailed account of her ethical justification. Thayer may or may not be completely off the deep end.) Neither of them works for a major outlet, but both of have worked for major outlets, so it's hardly clear how to score either the positive or negative aspects of that. Comparing the Washington Post to a blog is hard to do, because there's no particular guarantee that the two are on different sites, or by different authors.
- nickelcitymario 8y ago
  > sometimes those people break completely with journalistic practice. This may be the first real argument I've seen for the difference between blogging and journalism. Blogging is one person's opinion or account of a topic. Journalism is one person's opinion or account of a topic, as filtered, reviewed, revised, challenged, fact-checked, and approved by an organization. It's reasonable to expect an individual to be able to decide whether they trust a handful of news organizations. If the NYT repeatedly breaks my trust, I can remove them from my reading list. But until then, I trust that the NYT to vet their writers. So I trust the authors published on nytimes.com without knowing a thing about them, because I trust the NYT. (Likewise, if I mistrust the org, I'll mistrust the contributors. Hello there, Fox News.) It's not reasonable to expect individuals to be able to decide how much they trust each individual writer. I don't even know how many writers I read on a daily basis. When it's a blogger, I take it with a grain of salt unless it's someone I read so often that I've come to trust them. (Hello, Jason Kottke.) This doesn't make blogging inferior to journalism. I probably get more value from blogs than news sites on the regular. But I do think it's a valid distinction to take into account.