« Sen. Santorum Quotes Bloggers | Main | Remembering The Victims, Then And Now »

The 'Deathtrap' Of Simple-Minded Blog Criticism

Every couple of months, some journalist with a superiority complex pens a blog-bashing commentary that is so simple-minded, it deserves to be held up to ridicule.

Andrew Kantor, the CyberSpeak columnist for USA Today, wrote just such a piece last week, condescending references to "amateurs" included. Here is an excerpt:

Bloggers and other amateur journalists have some of the same problems any amateurs do: They make up the rules as they go, and they run the risk of screwing up and hurting someone. But because blogging isn't their day job, they have little risk -- they aren't going to be fired. Professionals are constrained; they can't just do as they please.

Lowes and Home Depot have given amateurs the ability to do work that was once the province of pros, and inexpensive digital technology has given amateurs the ability "do" journalism. But just as amateurs with a set of power tools can do great work or build a deathtrap, amateur journalists can do the same.

Having the tools and using them wisely are two different things. In their rush to get the Big Scoop -- something pros know come few and far between -- bloggers and other citizen journalists love, for example, to blow small things out of proportion.

Some of the criticisms Kantor made about bloggers are on the mark. I've been a bit dismayed myself lately to see the gotcha mindset snowballing within the blogosphere as citizen journalists try to make their mark.

But what Kantor and most of my other journalistic brethren fail to acknowledge -- either out of ignorance or self-delusion -- is that bloggers are merely imitating (probably unintentionally) the worst of what they see in the mainstream media. "Professional" journalists long ago mastered the art of blowing small things out of proportion. They are experts at building informational deathtraps. And very few get fired when they screw up and hurt someone. Some even get rewarded for it.

The fact is that both the professionals and the amateurs have much to learn from each other. We pros can teach the journeymen how and where to dig for great stories, how to treat people fairly in coverage even when you disagree with them, and maybe even how a bill really becomes a law. The amateurs can teach the pros how to better use the tools of the information age, show us the humility necessary to work effectively as a team, and help us recapture the passion that lured us into the business in the first place.

Ironically, the conclusion that Kantor reached about citizen journalists can be turned around on my industry with just a few tweaks. "[Professional] journalists are here to stay. ... But if they hope to be taken seriously -- beyond [the prestige of their many] press passes or [heavily marketed and sensationalized] scoops -- they need to take that next step beyond [their ivory-encrusted] toolbox. They need to learn [anew] the best ways to use it."

Then and only then will the professionals have the right to lecture the amateurs about how to produce quality journalism -- and only then will they not want to.

Posted by Danny | 06:38 PM

Comments

Post a Comment