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This ignores the fact that journalism is a professional discipline with established ethical practices that is practiced by groups of journalists and editors tog

This ignores the fact that journalism is a professional discipline with established ethical practices that is practiced by groups of journalists and editors together. Now there's definitely an argument to be made that it routinely fails to live up to those standards and that it has certain structural weaknesses and biases that need to be addressed. But it is, overall, a system of professionals who consider their work to be constrained in certain ways that are ethically important to them and the world. Individual podcasters might adhere to some of these standards but as a field it has no aspirations to that. Same with journalists leaving established papers to publish on substack with no editorial oversight. They are not practicing journalism as journalists see the field. These things might replace journalism but they aren't it.

sdenton4 6y ago
Text had no special claims in truth, I'm afraid. And many of the best podcasters are in fact journalists. Greg Warner, Sarah Koenig, even Alex Blumberg...
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
  That's not what I'm claiming at all. It's not about the medium it's about the structures, constraints, and goals of the work. I'm also not claiming that podcasting can't be journalism, just that the structures necessary for it to be aren't widespread or generally highly valued by podcasters as a group. Plenty of journalists do use it as their medium but that doesn't make podcasting and journalism the same thing.
  - sdenton4 6y ago
    And I never claimed that all podcasting is journalism... Journalism is a subset of (text/audio), and some (writers/podcasters) care a lot more about journalistic standards than others. I would argue that podcasting institutions - npr and affiliates, gimlet, radiotopia - actually do have a lot of understanding and respect for journalistic standards, and also represent a very large share of the most popular podcasts. I don't think the two media are as different in this regard as you seem to believe.
gamacodre 6y ago
I worry that hardly anyone believes this anymore. Most of my acquaintance seem to think more highly of their favorite youtube "news" purveyor than any journalistic source. In their minds, journalism stopped being a practice some time ago, and now there are just media megacorps that produce check-the-box ideological hit pieces based on which billionaire owns the company at the moment. I think that actual journalism is still alive in the hearts of many of the employees of those companies, but it's really hard to convince anyone else of that when there's no differentiation in placement or promotion between serious work and shoddy clickbait.

sdenton4 6y ago

Text had no special claims in truth, I'm afraid. And many of the best podcasters are in fact journalists. Greg Warner, Sarah Koenig, even Alex Blumberg...

8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
That's not what I'm claiming at all. It's not about the medium it's about the structures, constraints, and goals of the work. I'm also not claiming that podcasting can't be journalism, just that the structures necessary for it to be aren't widespread or generally highly valued by podcasters as a group. Plenty of journalists do use it as their medium but that doesn't make podcasting and journalism the same thing.
- sdenton4 6y ago
  And I never claimed that all podcasting is journalism... Journalism is a subset of (text/audio), and some (writers/podcasters) care a lot more about journalistic standards than others. I would argue that podcasting institutions - npr and affiliates, gimlet, radiotopia - actually do have a lot of understanding and respect for journalistic standards, and also represent a very large share of the most popular podcasts. I don't think the two media are as different in this regard as you seem to believe.

gamacodre 6y ago

I worry that hardly anyone believes this anymore. Most of my acquaintance seem to think more highly of their favorite youtube "news" purveyor than any journalistic source. In their minds, journalism stopped being a practice some time ago, and now there are just media megacorps that produce check-the-box ideological hit pieces based on which billionaire owns the company at the moment. I think that actual journalism is still alive in the hearts of many of the employees of those companies, but it's really hard to convince anyone else of that when there's no differentiation in placement or promotion between serious work and shoddy clickbait.