Jay Rosen has posted a walloping trilogy of responses and reactions to the recent Bloggers, Journalism and Credibility conference at Harvard. (One, Two, Three.)
It’s clear that a lot of editors and news execs got their minds opened a little wider, and some number of bloggers got to see that the monolith of the so-called MSM is made up of real, dedicated people. There’s no war here, except when an occasional provocateur decides to stir things up (inaccurately, says Rosen).
As my five-year-old son Matthew likes to say: “Whatever.”
But there is still, I think, a gulf in understanding between journalistic professionals and blogging amateurs. Professionals have been conditioned for life into thinking that “reach” equals value and that news and information that is not commercial is news and information that is not significant. Amateurs typically don’t care as long as they get to do what they love. (Some amateurs do care, but they are not true amateurs — they are simply aspiring professionals, pros who just haven’t yet been hired.) So pros fail to understand the significance of the vast reaches of the blogosphere that do not compete with pro journalism and don’t wish to. These multitudes may have tiny followings; they may desire slightly larger followings — who doesn’t want to be heard? — but they don’t dream of stardom or of quitting their day jobs. (Not, at least, in order to blog.)
When a New York Times Magazine writer declared last fall that “nobody reads” most blogs, he casually flattened the space between “mass or niche market” and “nobody.” This formulation shoves everything that falls below the threshold of media significance into the null void.
Pros — stuck on the understandable but by now, one hopes, discredited idea that blogging aims to replace journalism as we know it — often can’t kick the habit of valuing blogging purely as a business proposition. Some quotes from Rosen’s roundup illustrate this.
Here’s Jim Kennedy, vice president and director of strategic planning for The Associated Press: “The real ‘ecosystem’ of news — with reporters, editors, bloggers and wikipedians — won’t truly flourish until we figure out how to support it. Can we provide services to each other, form business partnerships, generate mutual traffic benefits?”
(But the ecosystem is flourishing now — just have a look!)
Here’s Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard: “…I think that the brand and distribution power of the mainstream media will be even more important in an increasingly crowded blogosphere.”
(Yes, if your aim is to corral eyeballs. But there are other standards.)
Here’s Faye M. Anderson, , former national correspondent for PoliticallyBlack.com, former vice chairman of the Republican National Committee’s New Majority Council: “Bloggers’ credibility will be established by the market. If readers find us credible, they will come. If not, we’ll be left with a community of fifteen people.”
(Millions of blogs, each with a community of fifteen people? That adds up to a rather large sphere of communication.)
Ethan Zuckerman seemed to get what I’m talking about: “This conference reminded me that both camps [bloggers and Wikipedians] are firmly in the ‘amateur’ camp — where ‘amateur’ doesn’t mean ‘unprofessional’, but ‘motivated by love, not by financial remuneration.'”
Blogs are superficially similar enough to newspapers, magazines and commercial Web sites that professional journalists can talk about them while hanging onto their old yardsticks and habits of thinking. To a lot of editors, a blogger just looks like a byline in search of a paycheck. But the Wikipedia‘s nameless, recompense-less multitudes can’t be dismissed as easily.
That’s why, I think, the Wikipedia seems to have blown so many pros’ minds at the conference. Gee — maybe this stuff really is, you know, new. And different. And worthy of, if not outright preening, then close attention.
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