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Bloggers Now Eligible For Press Passes In NYC
RobotRunAmok writes "The New York City Police Department announced Tuesday that bloggers and others who publish on the Web will now be eligible for press credentials. The move comes as a result of a lawsuit filed in 2008 by three Web journalists who were denied press passes. In New York, journalists with press passes are typically allowed to cross police barricades at public events. 'Events that will qualify include city-sponsored activity — like a press conference or parade — as well as emergencies where the city has set up do-not-cross lines. The proposal also allows inexperienced journalists to obtain single-use press passes. Longtime civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, who represented the journalists who sued, says the city will now decide who a journalist is by looking at the type of work they do, and not the organization they write for.'"
... has made the press pass obsolete.
as a photographer who makes part of my income with press/arts photography, im not looking forward to this. It just means more morons crowding events and creating problems for the rest of us. Yeah, im real happy you write/shoot for some blog with 5 people who read it.
This is starting to become the new form of journalism. The "big guys" like TV and radio owners are starting to lay off their full time staff, and replacing them with people who can report, record, and edit their own pieces who get paid by the number of reports they generate that make air.
To the average news viewer, this is almost transparent... so the standard shouldn't be "I work for CNN," but "CNN uses my iReports regularly."
They editorialize.
I post opinions, rumors, announcements, and other "media-like" information right here on this very site in the form of comments. Unfortunately, because I don't submit stories, enter journals, or edit summaries (I don't think the /. editors do either) I am not considered a journalist.
Despite the time and effort I put into making sure my posts are factual, interesting, engaging, inciteful, and sometimes funny, my work (and I don't hesitate to call it work) here as a active contributor to the discussions surrounding each story is like dust in the wind, dude.
An interesting detail is that 99% of the "bloggers" on the web only post volatile, vain bollox, and that cannot count as journalism, which I believe is a requirement for a press pass.
"... the city will now decide who a journalist is by looking at the type of work they do, and not the organization they write for."
"Hi, John Doe here, reporting live on behalf of the Satanic Blog Network..."
Yes, this was my poor attempt at humor, but seriously, you just might want to know who the blogger really represents before finding out they were hired by the "wrong" people to spread mis-information, especially when the vehicles of information these days(FB, blogs, twitter) are damn near real-time.
And here to bring you the news. :P
What's been missing from the coverage the David Patterson press conferences has been the shrewd, insightful experience and reportage from the OMG ponies! perspective. The mainstream media has been suppressing that important voice since, like, forever. Mean people suck! Also, that young guy Aaron on America Idol - he would so make a great sparkly vampire someday.
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On one hand this is a great victory for free speech/freedom of the press. On the other hand, if they start handing out press passes to anyone then there is a real threat for terrorists to easily get their hands on press passes. I just hope they do some kind of background check first. 'Hi I'm from Al Qaeda news and would like to bring some camera equipment backstage for the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. Don't mind the canisters marked anthrax, it's the new Kodak anthrax film. '
Lets throw out the vetting process and let any douche bag who can go to an Internet cafe and login to blogspot have a press pass, great idea.
Why not just make it so a press pass costs $5 and anyone can buy one ... I mean, thats what you've done anyway.
No, traditional media isn't perfect and bias free, but regardless of all the political bullshit out there, I still have far more faith that I'm going to be able to filter out the bullshit from traditional media far easier than figuring out the agenda of some random blogger who's never been seen by more than 5 people before in is life.
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OK, that will get the New York Times out of the way of real reporters.
I think you may be reminiscing about the good old days when journalism was actually a respectable profession there, pops. Journalism has devolved into corporate press releases and edutainment over the last quarter century. But that's actually beside the point.
This is about freedom of expression. Journalists should not be a special class of people who receive special privileges. Journalism isn't engineering or programming, it is fairly simple. There is no reason to limit journalism to professionals, because unprofessional journalists can't really cause any more harm to society than professionals, unlike most other professions, and unlike all regulated professions. Unlike a VB program, most everyone can read an article and decide for themselves whether it is full of holes or trash.
So, press passes should be available to anyone who wants them. If you screw up, you get your pass taken away. It's that simple. No need for false elitism. Seriously, I challenge anyone to a.) list the privileges having a press pass gives you, and b.) explain why those privileges are so dangerous they should be limited to professional journalists, and for extra credit, c.) show why journalists themselves deserve those privileges and how they won't be a danger in the hands of professionals.
I am of the opinion that things should only be limited or regulated for good cause. There are lots of good causes to limit or regulate a good many things, but not journalism.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
One of the sports blogs that I regularly read, which will remain unmentioned for fear of the Slashdot effect, actually convinced the NFL to give him a press pass to the NFL Scouting Combine. Since I started reading his blog in '08, the writer has ingratiated himself with the local* beat guys, get an article published in the New York Times, and built a rapport with members of the national sports media and NFL Players. When it counts, he puts in just as much work as the beat writers and his analysis is often a step ahead of theirs, even with less access. I have absolutely no problem with giving him a press pass.
Nate Silver, from fivethirtyeight.com, also provides excellent political commentary. His primary work is with polls, and we was able to correctly predict 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 presidential election. He has also contributed to ESPN, Slate, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, and the New York Sun. Again, I hardly have an issue with him receiving a press pass.
As stated in the article, there are requirements in place for attaining a press pass. I'm sure this will be a work in progress, but opening up the news reporting mechanism in this country can hardly be a bad thing.
*He lives in New York, but covers the Green Bay(Wisconsin) Packers. He gets regular commentary from writers in Green Bay and Milwaukee, the two largest markets that cover the team.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Rule three sounds like it is covered by the new policy. The policy is not, 'anyone can get a press pass.' It is, 'Anyone can apply for a press pass, and if it looks anything like they have been practicing journalism, even on a blog no one reads, they will get it.' Someone with a history of disruption likely would not receive a pass in the first place, and someone who ceases to act like a journalist could have it revoked.
The main change is that you don't have to be paid, or working for a big news outlet, to get a press pass. You just have to act like a journalist.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There are a number of "Press" parking spots in NYC. A large number of people get the passes for free parking and get maps detailing the locations of these spots. You are not allowed to park in these spots without either the press license plate or a placard in your window, if you do have either of those, free parking.
I have mixed feelings about this. I was a freelance business writer during the end of the DotCom boom. I actually did have some published pieces, and because of that, I didn't have too hard a problem getting into MOST industry events (where I was professional and actually working).
However, those same tech events were even then littered with "faux press" already--guys who showed up with huge empty duffel bags for the sole purpose of hoarding all of the free crap that they could grab, like T-shirts, software samples, etc. It made it almost impossible to get a legit review copy of anything, be it a book or a software title, if you got there past the first open hour, because the grabbers had already been through.
There was a whole sub-tribe of folks who I ran into for years who did nothing at trade shows and industry events other than get drunk, eat as much food as possible in the press room, and take as much free crap as they could carry.
ON THE OTHER HAND.....
I know lots of very good and legit bloggers and photgraphers who were shut out of events precisely due to lack of previous "paper" published work or byline in-hand. It seemed very arbitrary.
The grabbers always made it in, but a lot of honest folks trying to make a start for themselves got shut out.
I don't know what the legality of a two-tier press pass system would be, but it would be nice if there was some kind of intermediate "apprentice" pass available for just-starters. If they get a positive follow-up from an event organizer X number of times, they could "graduate" to a full pass. If they're not grabbers or bullshit artists, then they wouldn't mind giving a real URL and a real name for contact purposes.
Just a thought and my 2c.
For existing press people to start teaching training classes on how to approach the scene, safety, etc
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
Traditional print hasn't figured out how to stay competitive in the new world and is reducing quality of reporting by reducing to a skeleton staff. Might as well remove the barriers and allow the alternative media equal footing. Sure there are a lot of schmucks with blogs, but there are also a lot of knowledgeable and passionate folks out there who write blogs. Sure the wrinkles still need to be worked out, as in, what, if any, should the qualifications be for bloggers. Should it be based on readership? Past output? Who makes that decision? This stuff can be ironed out over time as problems present themselves. But you have to start somewhere.
Now that I've been endowed with the entirely necessary indiscriminate press pass for my work in blogging old cartoons; I suddenly feel it's my civic duty to attend every single event I can with my new press credentials before someone eventually takes them away
If the only qualification for being a journalist is "having an email address", where do we get accountability? Real journalists take classes on ethics and have an employer who can fire them. It's easier to blackball a journalist out of the field than it is to prevent a blogger from posting.
i dislike the idea if bloggers as journalists more than i dislike people writing in a professional capacity and calling it blogging.
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