The Media Blogger’s Association will be rotating members in two seats, blurring the already hazy line between bloggers and journalists. So where did the line go?
Sheldon Snook, administrative assistant to Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan, said in a recent Washington Post article that: “Bloggers can bring a depth of reporting that some traditional media organizations aren’t able to achieve because of space and time limitations.”
On the topic of depth, just how deep can bloggers get? And what does the term buzzing around the blogosphere, “investigative blogger” even mean? Bloggers have proved themselves at exposing media foul-ups. But there is a whole world of investigating to do.
Brad Friedman is a self-proclaimed ‘investigative blogger’ who broke the story of the “White House Web site Scrubbing.” Although today he hates to make the distinction of “investigative blogger,” he admits that not being held to the same editorial process does create a schism.
“Actually, I may have been the one who coined the phrase, ‘investigative blogger,’ I’m not sure.”
The reason he used that phrase at first was out of respect for journalists and because he felt there was a difference between what he did and what they did, “until I spent the next couple of years taking such a close look at what journalists really were doing.” That’s when he realized he is as much of an “investigative journalist” as they are.
For that same reason Chris Nolan, from Spot-On said during the National Conference on Media Reform, referring to the ‘victory’ for bloggers in covering the Scooter Libby trial:
“I would caution anyone who is starting a blog or a Web site to not to look to the government to approve your ability to write online. [Spot-on] was offered media blogger credentials, but if we wanted to cover the trial I would have told our writer to go down to the courthouse and get credentialed as a spot-on reporter or writer….You are opening the door to telling people when you can speak, how you can speak and what you can speak to and I think it’s an extremely dangerous path.”
And why should bloggers look to the media to feel legitimized? They can be reprimanded like real journalist. Take the case of Josh Wolf—who has been incarcerated for more than 150 days. For Friedman, it goes to show that there really is no difference between an investigative blogger and investigative journalist.
“When you have got bloggers who are essentially facing the same perils as reporters, it certainly blurs the line,” he said.
So what is an “investigative blogger”? It’s a state of mind – taking the art of the blog to the next level.
“I see a lot of progressive bloggers out there basically doing the same thing that the White House press corps is, basically responding to whatever it is Tony Snow has to say on any given night, instead of going out there, digging in and finding their own stories.”
It’s the digging that makes an investigation – not the organization that publishes the findings.
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Ahmed Shihab-Eldin was born in California and grew up in Egypt and Austria. He received his Bachelor of Science in Communication from Boston University and is currently completing his Master of Science in Journalism at Columbia. He has worked as a staff writer for The Daily Free Press. He speaks English and Arabic and enough German and French to get by.
The blog widget allows people to chat with others surfing the same online waves.
Incircles is a startup founded by Simon Foster, a commercial and music video producer, and Zach Feirstadt, former chief network architect at MySpace, after discussing the lack of innovation with IM on the web.
The service detects a user’s presence on websites, allowing them to chat among groups, with select friends, privately or collectively on the actual web page, and this means everyone has similar interests. The equivalent of a citizen journalist budget report.
InCircles isn’t a normal IM network. It doesn’t limit conversations to people users already know. There is no buddy list; it is what they call, Concurrent Messaging or CM—linking users together.
The widget doesn’t only connect users, but also websites. It increases traffic via a ‘meta network’ by sharing contextual similarities across the InCircles network.
Through this users can surf the web together in real time, sharing content and exchanging comments like a chat room on the go.
This all sounds great—but of course—there are problems, such as no moderation capabilities.
Some people also want to see the beta version associate user names with IP addresses and add the ability to store messages—even if just for a limited time period—which makes some sense.
Still, the technology itself is more functional than many other similar to it, and relatively simple—updates will be automatic as users refresh the webpage they are visiting.
InCircle users can also connect to other popular sites within their network through the ‘Popular Pages’ feature.
They claim this is just the tip of the iceberg and expect to release a new beta versions soon.
Ahmed Shihab-Eldin is currently completing his Master of Science in Journalism at Columbia. He has worked as a staff writer for The Daily Free Press and is working as an intern for the New York Times.
As a student at Columbia University, the “golden temple” of mainstream media, that’s a phrase I hear a lot. Everyone is trying to come to grips with it.
I wonder — how do you grab something that’s constantly changing?
So yesterday we had a panel discussion with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, among others, aptly titled “The Changing Media Landscape.” (Audio)
Wikipedia is always changing. Maybe they are on to something?
In the middle of the lecture Sree Sreenivasan, the panel moderator, changed the source on a WikiNews article (its somewhat failed attempt at joining journalism) — attributing Jimmy Wales as the author of an AP article.
Within five minutes it was corrected (disclosure: it was someone from the audience). Still, it was an example of what makes Wikipedia reliable—having no editor when it really has countless editors.
Some people think this needs to change. The Citizendium Project is an experimental wikiproject combining public participation with expert supervision that will launch as a “progressive fork” of Wikipedia—a project Wales is skeptical, but also seemingly curious about.
“The best answer to quality problems is more openness—not more control,” said Wales.
Wikipedia is the best example of an open encyclopedia. But the cool thing about the free world of General Public License means that like open source software, Citizendium can take Wikipedia’s articles and fork them in a new direction to try and produce something of a higher quality.
Even Wales had to admit that Citizendium’s change could be heading in the right direction.
“In fact if he comes up with good processes that seem to be working than we will adopt the same processes.”
And that’s the beauty of open source – it’s a collaborative effort even amongst competitors – always changing.
Journalism is changing too, but perhaps not as willingly as Wikipedia or as intelligibly.
What concerns Rex Smith, editor of the Albany Times Union is that people aren’t just turning to the Web and abandoning paper, they are losing their appetite for journalism itself—across the board.
He asked: What is it that people are looking for that traditional journalism seems to be missing? The answer: “The bone marrow inside the community.”
He said what many might not be so comfortable admitting—that one reason for the decline in newspaper readership is “we have failed to deliver that to people. We have become more distant from them.”
But change can be easy. Even during a new media panel addressing old media fears. During the Q&A Sree put his phone number on a large screen and audience members texted him questions for Wales and Smith. Without being aware of it — a room full of journalists had been crowdsourced for their best questions.
That change wasn’t too painful. I wonder what else can change?
— Ahmed Shihab-Eldin was born in California and grew up in Egypt and Austria. He received his Bachelor of Science in Communication from Boston University and is currently completing his Master of Science in Journalism at Columbia. He has worked as a staff writer for The Daily Free Press. He speaks English and Arabic and enough German and French to get by.