In a significant portion of the journalism blogging community, I’ve witnessed the following themes emerge:
- We’re all going to die. We’re all going to freaking die.
- There are two types of reporters: Those who “get it,” and those who “just don’t get it.” If you don’t know what you’re getting, then you clearly don’t get it.
- Those who “just don’t get it” need to hurry up and “get it,” or we’re all going to die.
And then there are all of those journalists who aren’t blogging, but are complaining just as loudly about how the Internet is messing everything up.
It’s more of a spectrum than a dichotomy, of course, but no matter where you fall there’s a lot of negativity. We’re awfully short on working together, though, and it’s getting pretty nasty out there.
So I’m hoping to join the many blogs I’ve read that are somewhere between the bunkers.
I’m totally down with new media skills — I use Facebook and MySpace as reporting tools on a consistent basis (example here), and I’ll write plenty about my Hershey Home site that I set up as part of Jay Rosen and David Cohn‘s beatblogging.org project. I fully understand how a loaded RSS reader is essential in keeping me on top of my community and the larger culture. I’m trying to improve my audio and video skills.
But I don’t look down upon reporters who didn’t understand a word in that last paragraph, yet could report and write me under the table. There’s a place for them, too.
I would never claim to have any grand visions about how we can cure newspapers’ economic woes, how to pull life-sustaining profits from our Web sites or otherwise save this struggling industry.
My focus is smaller: The simple ways that any reporter can make journalism better, including but not limited to Internet skills.