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Blogger Vs. Journalist — Access Denied
An anonymous reader writes "The Application Delivery Networking blog has an interesting take on bloggers vs. journalists. The post is a response to a complaint on Mark Evans' blog about why Nortel wouldn't give him access, despite the fact that he's the only blogger that focuses solely on Nortel. As a tech PR guy I can tell you that the article hits the nail right on the head about vendors' tenuous relationship with bloggers." Quoting: "You probably aren't aware of the hierarchy out there [in] the media community. Access to information from vendors is based on your status within the hierarchy. The information a member of the press gets from a vendor is different from what's given to an analyst and is different than what a blogger is going to receive. Bloggers... [can] be dangerous because they aren't bound by any rules. And that's what you're missing because you've not been a member of the press... And guess where bloggers fall [in the hierarchy]? Yup. Stand up straight, there, private!"
How is this an "interesting take" on bloggers vs press? Bloggers feel
disrespected because they aren't treated as real members of the media,
and the press feels like credentials shouldn't be handed out to
anybody with a web site. What's new here?
I'm not an analyst, but I play one on Slashdot.
--Lance
Look, I don't think that professional journalists are somehow better than the rest of the world or that their opinions matter more, but at the same time, just because you're some dick with a fucking wordpress or blogger.com site doesn't mean you're owed admission as press to anything anywhere. Get over your god damn self. You have a keyboard and an opinion not necessarily a degree and a practice sense of professionalism.
There are two things I hate. Journalists who have huge egos and think they are superior and bloggers who think they are journalists or even superior to them. I have a video camera and an idea for a movie. That doesn't make me a fucking member of the Directors Guild.
A man named Terry Shannon published a newsletter called Shannon Knows DEC (and later Compaq, and HPC after that) for many years before he died. Shannon fit the definition of blogger except for the fact that his newsletter predated blogs. Shannon relied on rumor and secret information from his contacts at DEC. His newsletter was seen as a valuable contribution by the DEC user community, and alternately as a nuisance and a useful side channel by management. I would wager that the difference between Shannon and the blogger of the current article is that Shannon tried harder and didn't expect anything for free. He cultivated his information sources over the course of decades and frequently in the face of open hostility from the companies in question. Perhaps the blogger in question needs to cease whining and simply find a better way to operate.
At this point in time, I do not trust the average journalist any more than I trust the average blogger.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
It might be worthwhile to have bloggers who write on similar topics band together into a "zine" (a "bzine"?). Readers who want specific types of news will gravitate towards these sources rather than having to hit several different pages, increasing the legitimacy of the combined sources. The sources could then self-impose professional journalistic behavior on its members; since the "bzines" would be providing significant amounts of traffic to the individual bloggers, being kicked off one would be a serious incentive towards following rules. Once this has gelled, companies would be more likely to provide information to associated bloggers.
I have been blogging for 5+ years and I can vouch for the fact that most companies cant understand blogging or other means of "citizen journalism".
I actually find the job of a journalist very confusing. To me, it appears that they are supposed to
1- be able to grasp when an event is newsworthy
2- to report is accurately
3- to comment on/critique it
4- follow up later with more related news if any
Point 2 is something that an observant person can do with reasonable accuracy (without needing a background). Everything else needs a significant understanding of the business at hand. You dont need to be a doc to be able to say that a road-accident is serious; but when you are reporting technical/business decisions of a company, there is no way, a reporter can do a good job of it, without having a significant grounding on the background.
Most reporters dont, and that makes most news look like press releases of a company.
This is where a good blogger can fill in the gap. At the end of the day, what should matter is whether the writing is relevant, insightful and accurate. Whether or not, the person is a professional journalist is irrelevant. Most companies however seem to prefer the safety of renowned newspaper against the uncertainity of an unknown blogger.
I guess the bloggers need to shrug it off and move on with whatever they can find. As long as the articles are useful, the companies will begin to eventually take notice. I know, at least in my work, we keep a watch on what some specific people are writing about us.
Why in the world would you want to be subject to all the rules and regulations about what you say and all the political and commercial preassure that comes from being part of the "media". Why the hell would anyone want to attach that stigma to themselves? For a backstage pass and the chance to go to jail to protect your source? There are bennefits to not being part of the media, embrace them. If you want to be a journalist, apply for a newspaper job.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Look, I have a blog, and I am pretty sick of people treating blogs, for good or for ill, as qualitatively different from other types of publications.
If you were a blogger and spent as much time ass-kissing/finessing/building relationships with Nortel as the traditional press does, and had readership numbers in the demographics Nortel wanted to reach, you'd get that press pass.
If you were a traditional publication and spent a lot of energy writing stuff that pissed Nortel off, you wouldn't get that press pass.
The fact that a blog is involved has nothing to do with anything.
That question seems to have a lot of bearing on how much or how little bloggers should be given access. Any idiot with a computer can start a blog; access to PR & real people's time should be limited to those who actually provide news coverage. The line is drawn somewhere with regard to print media; shouldn't the principle behind that delimitation apply to bloggers as well, whatever it might be?
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
It has nothing to do with your creditentials blogger or journo. D'ya think every journalist gets a ticket into every event? Who the bouncer's told to let it depends on the business interests of the party holding the event. If they like you and think you'll help them sell product/service you're in. If they don't you're out. Blogger vs. journo is just an excuse. Nothing to do with rights online or anything else.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Ok want to become a journalist, create a site, and I don't mean a fucking blog, I mean an actual site like IGN, gamespot, Cnn, or what ever media site you want, then bitch when they don't invite you because you're site sucks.
Most major media outlets aren't just cheesy crap boxes that people put up over night, they are hard work, if you honestly want to be a "journalist" apply to them or make your own and then build it up. Just realize it'll take a long time before you're counted as an actual journalist, and all that time you better be playing by the journalist rules (btw if you don't know those? too bad you're held to them).
Kotaku is a decently well known blog, who had a recent run in with Sony, where Sony blackballed them, they printed a rumor and sony was pissed off, this illustrates a problem with bloggers, they are known as an unknown entity. In the end sony apologized and removed the blackball, but it's still an incident that illustrates exactly why bloggers aren't journalists and shouldn't be expected to be treated as journalists. They have their own rules, and they don't owe anything to anyone else. Sony told them not to post it but they had a factual rumor, and no reason not to print it.
Kotaku for the most part gets a LOT of stuff that bloggers wouldn't normally. They get invites to major parties, free development hardware (to try out new demos), free games, information and so on. But notice all this free shit isn't because they are a blog. It's because they are moderately popular to the point that people read them enough where they can be considered a news source. The companies who are supporting them see them as worthy of their attention. Kotaku was fully in the right here.
On the other hand I could make a site "loser news" and never get a 10th of what they get, why? because my news site wouldn't be considered "worthy".
Simply put bloggers should be honored when they are invited or allowed into press releases because they are getting in on something that 10 years ago they probably wouldn't but on the other hand, they need to realize exactly what they are. And that's not "the press" they are some idiot on the internet with opinions that people read, so it's time for bloggers to stop expecting to be treated like the press.
If they honestly want to get into press events then they should becoming "the press", but they still aren't entitled to this no matter what Mr. Evans thinks.
Oh and before you try it, don't try "freedom of the press" you don't got it. you can use "right to free speech" but again... ehhh Mr. Evans won't learn, and the rest of you pretty much understand this.
Are you trying to say that you are only a journalist if you have a formal license to be a journalist from the government, like a doctor or lawyer?
There are perhaps some people who would suggest that this should happen (and some countries even have issued licenses for this kind of activity), but on a basic level that is huge interference on the part of governments. An alternate way to look at this is if the "journalist" has a degree in journalism (or a degree in anything) or not. There are plenty of very excellent journalists who get their job without going through the route of college graduate -> small market TV/radio/newspaper -> major media outlet journalist.
Yes, that is the more typical behavior to be "accepted" within the community of other journalists, which is exactly what this article points out.
There is nothing that is stopping somebody from getting a printing press and setting up their own "newspaper", just as you can do that with a website. The only difference is that setting up the newspapers costs quite a bit more money than the blogger website. In fact most blog sites don't even require you to know HTML any more. But in the case of somebody throwing some money together and creating a newspaper, radio or television station, all of these media outlets started somewhere. You or I can create something like this if we wanted, and give us some "legitimacy" in terms of being a journalist.
CNN, to give a very good example, started when Bill Tish used to stand in an alleyway behind the transmitter at WTBS with a paper bag over his head reading some AP wire copy for ten minutes each day at 11:30 PM.... to meet the FCC "local programming" requirements that included news coverage. I would say that in spite of these roots, CNN certainly is near the top of the food chain in terms of credibility as a news source (taking discussions of political bias between CNN vs. Fox aside).
What happens is that for anybody to be taken seriously as a journalist, you have to build a reputation. And if you "belong" to a certain organization (say a group called "The New York Times"), your efforts as a journalist also help to build the reputation of the group you work with as well. And some groups have been around for some time to have a reputation that perhaps is even undeserved because the "journalists" working for that group are in reality inferior to their predecessors who built that reputation in the first place, or that in time people forget the awful mistakes and only have nostalgia for reporters who were around over a hundred years ago.
Getting back to CNN here again, they also went through some growing pains when they got started (trying to shed the image of the unknown reporter I mentioned above) and went through some hassles trying to get a White House press pass. The first several times they applied, they were turned down nearly repeatedly, even though they clearly were at least acting like a national news agency. It gets back to the reputation thing again, and I think having the Bush White House turn down CNN for credentials would be today laughable.
That this one blogger is complaining that he didn't get credentials for something he thought was his area of expertise, he shouldn't be crying foul or "freedom of speech". He is standing in the proud tradition of other journalists who have been kicked out of similar events. It is up to that blogger to demonstrate the reputation that he has credibility necessary to be considered in the majors. Just ask Matt Drudge. He is a blogger that would rarely get thrown out of a Washington D.C. press conference any more, and it took him some time to build that reputation.
It's all pretty obvious. Certain publishers can get press cards for their journalists. Why? Not because the journalists are better writers than "bloggers", but because they are consolidated into a company and must obey certain rules. This means that I know the information I give will be treated within the rules of the press.
From the little experience I've had with the media, any statement about trust that includes all journalists or all bloggers is likely to be meaningless. People trust people, not a job description. I'm sure that being a journalist is a plus, but individual outfits tend to build relationships with individual commentators, ie not everyone will speak to the same journalists.
So I'd expect part of the equation for bloggers to be the extent to which they form a relationship with people in whatever company (or whatever) they want to cover. And, if the blogger has an "all companies are evil and only progress by being slammed on my blog" mentality, or a "I tell you everything the company doesn't want you to know" mentality, that won't be a plus in terms of trust. More generally, while companies know that journalists are in business to sell their media, they at least think they have a handle on the motivation of journalists, whereas the motivation of many bloggers must seem pretty mysterious.
If bloggers want to maintain strict neutrality and be unaccountable for what they write, they should expect to be treated as outsiders. If they want to be treated as insiders, rules apply.
Virtually serving coffee
A few months back the "Newseum" held a seminar on the relevance of blogging, and how it affected professional journalism. One guy stood up and berated Wikipedia for a half hour, stating he saw no value in any media that could so easily be altered by the average user.
Bloggers have to keep in mind that professional journalism is a multi-billion dollar industry, with owners and investors willing to defend the status quo with the same aggression as big oil attacks global warming.
Just ask yourself: why would an organization like the Newseum even exist? To influence public perception of the media in general, and defend traditional journalism from threats such as the Internet.
I guess, once again, you just have to follow the money...
Vocal minorities are often confused with silent majorities.