Joho the Blog
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February 18, 2005
At the end of last night's weird Berkman blogging meeting, recorded by ABC News for some upcoming episode of Nightline, the producer expressed surprise that anyone would blog about the presence of the cameras in the meeting. There were some very smart replies by bloggers there — Go Lisa, who concluded "Yes, my life is interesting to me" — but the producer's comment indicated to me that we failed to make the point that blogging isn't a sub-species of journalism. Of course we're blogging the event because it's something in our lives that we find interesting: We're not in front of the cameras every day and it's pretty damn fascinating to see how the mere presence of a camera creates a distortion field. But is "Cameras record meeting" news? Of course not; it's a condition for there being news. (Hmm. I think I'm saying what Brendan Greeley of PRX said last night.) By the way, to read a surprisingly sympathetic view of the effect of blogging on journalism, see Peggy "Reagan's Speechwriter" Noonan's take on it. Wow. [Thanks, Dave, for the link.] [Technorati tag: media] Posted
by D. Weinberger at February 18, 2005 09:36 AM
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Comments
"surprisingly" sympathetic? tsk-tsk, David.
Posted by: Terry Heaton | February 18, 2005 11:08 AM
In talking further with the producer at the dinner last night, I concluded that the "are bloggers a subspecies of journalist" problem was one of semantics, and he agreed. We all thought we bloggers were being defined narrowly by being defined as journalists; he thought we were defining journalism narrowly by excluding blogging. In his view, he said (and I'm definitely paraphrasing), anyone who publishes an opinion into the world is a kind of journalist. So to him, through his journalist's eyes, we are all journalists - and not just the pros and the bloggers.
Several of us reponded that we thought part of bloggers' general resistance to being called journalists is a desire not to be misunderstood as seeking that kind of godlike pseudo-objectivity, etc., that we (average citizens) tend to attribute to journalists. Evidently when you're a journalist, or at least when you're this particular journalist, you don't see journalism that way.
Posted by: Erica | February 18, 2005 12:26 PM
I was looking for other accounts of the meeting; Adam posted to UniversalHub the delicious buffet and the liveblogged transcript. Blogging may not be wholly intertwined with journalism, but I see that three of the four agendas for these meetings this year have covered the journalistic aspects. Happy weekend. Jon
Posted by: Jon Garfunkel | February 18, 2005 06:08 PM
First time I remember agreeing with Reagan's speechwriter -- but in this case I do -- first orginal thing I have read on blogs and journalism in a long time.
Posted by: Tim | February 19, 2005 03:02 AM
It's a strange country where Peggy Noonan, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, peddles anti-elitist populism in the media wars... read more. Liberals shouldn't automatically lap this up because she's pandering to bloggers.
Posted by: Jon Garfunkel | February 20, 2005 11:33 PM