Another Say Everything excerpt: Journalists vs. Bloggers
Today: a second full-chapter excerpt from Say Everything for your consideration. This time, it’s Chapter Nine: Journalists vs. Bloggers. (Previously I’ve posted the introduction and Chapter One, the story of Justin Hall.)
I have been writing about the tormented relationship between journalists and bloggers for a decade. When I reached the part of Say Everything that involved chronicling this long relationship, part of me quailed: Oh, no — not again!
Then I started writing and everything came together: 10,000 words or so of my effort to wrangle this sprawling subject into a single narrative.
A side note: My reflex in naming the chapter was to write, “Bloggers vs. Journalists.” But after finishing it, I realized that over time, the preponderance of the aggression in this relationship has shifted. Once upon a time, certainly, you would find bloggers on the attack more frequently, and journalists simply going about their business. Today, I think, the situation is more frequently reversed. Thus the ordering of the title.
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June 23rd, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Your Say Everything link in the first line is busted …
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Aargh. Thanks for letting me know. Typo fixed now!
July 7th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Scott, I look forward to reading your book. Excerpts very interesting. But the entire MSM has not always been hostile to blogging. I wrote Good Morning Silicon Valley, a tech-oriented blog — we called it “an online column with attitude” since the word blog was yet to be invented — and often incorporated reader responses.
Dave Winer approached us at the San Jose Mercury News in about 1997 just as he was finishing his Userland software. Our tech guys didn’t want me to try it out, but Dan Gillmor (a print tech writer) did, on a reporting trip to China, I believe, to great success.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Thanks for the note, Pat. I was a reader of GMSV and indeed it’s mentioned in the book — as is Dan Gillmor’s blog.
Indeed, the relationship was not always hostile. As my chapter says, it started off much more neutral or even positive on the side of the media. It was only as blogging became more widespread *and* as the financial decline of the media became more serious that the combative stance became widespread.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Just found a review copy of your book in the newsroom here and will read tonight. Just scanning on page 134-135 about Gillmor’s work: See http://workingpress.net/GMSV/index.html about how I recovered some of the four years I spent putting into the online column. FWIW.