Journalists vs. Bloggers
Aaron Monteabaro on Jun 19th 2010
I feel as though I don’t know everything about this particular situation, so certain things have to be assumed for this context.
As he said in the article, he was only writing a ‘snapshot’ of the man’s life. Surely if the article were meant as a full and proper obituary, more information and a much wider scope would have been used. This particular ‘snapshot’ just happened to go on a blog, a medium that people are still defining and getting used to, so it’s an easy target for being labeled unprofessional.
From the article, he was reporting directly on what he saw from the guys room. Maybe he used it to make generalizations about his life, but as a smaller, more precisely focused story that’s what he was looking to do. He offered us a glimpse into the man’s life as seen from his roommate and partial care-taker, and his room. A reporter tells a story based on what they see. Yes he didn’t do a lot of digging, but it wasn’t appropriate for this story. Again, if he was writing a proper obituary, I’m sure he would have checked with everyone the man ever knew.
It still might have been prudent to check with the family, simply because it was recent after the man’s death, but in some ways I can see why he didn’t do that. After all, if he had checked with the family, the story would not have come out the way it did. It wasn’t slanderous as it stood, and with the family’s meddling it would have obscured or omitted some of what the reporter saw, preventing him from doing what reporters do.
There appears to be two different kinds of blogs: professional and personal. Personal blogs are mostly, if not completely, unregulated and therefore largely untrustworthy as news. These blogs serve countless different functions, however, that are beneficial to the writers and the readers.
The Times blogs are professional and are, or should be, kept to the same standards as their print work. I’m confident that most major news organizations’ blogs do just that. It’s not that journalistic ethics get relaxed for blogs, it’s just that blogs serve a different purpose than the bulk of a news organizations’ publishing. If an article intended for a blog is meant to be short and single focused, a ‘snapshot,’ then it needs to be made clear that it doesn’t cover every angle. But rarely, if ever, are blogs used to publish full-length and in-depth stories; that is what the paper or main website is for.
People have trouble figuring out what blogs are for. If the family in this case expected the blog piece to be a full obituary, they were mistaken. It was meant as a tidbit, and that’s why it was on the blog and not in the paper.
The problem is what people expect out of blogs and bloggers/journalists. Had that been a regular person and not a Times reporter, this wouldn’t have been an issue. The trouble is the professional journalists are held to higher reporting standards than citizen journalists, but blogs are still not widely used to report hard news.
Can a professional journalist keep a light blogging habit, or does everything they write have to be done with full length intensity? Can you be a journalist and a blogger, because the two are very different?
It sounds like he was doing a hit on what he saw at the moment, not a recap of the man’s life. Maybe it upset the family, but maybe they shouldn’t be so sensitive, after all the man was a well known celebrity. If that’s what his room really looked like then the story is not inaccurate.
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One Response to “Journalists vs. Bloggers”
Well I agree with some parts here. I don’t believe though that even though it was a snapshot of the jazz star’s life that it should have been so rough.
Yes, reporting is based on factual information, yes it’s a reporter’s duty to do such, but come one USE your head!
The way I see it, facts are easily bent when the advertising company threatens to pull their funds if they don’t like a certain story being told. Does everyone not know this? Please at least lie and say you do, because if you don’t you’ve been living under a rock.