So I see that Mr. Weingarten's column in the Washington Post has stirred up a hornet's nest. Well, that is what a columnist should do. Provoke a reaction in his or her audience. It had been my intention to ignore Mr. Weingarten and the debate over his not -on-the-scene observations but so many people mentioned his column to me today and asked me for my take on it, I thought I'd share it.
First, let me extend to Mr. Weingarten the same courtesy that he showed the Online News Association and its conference In Boston. I won't actually read his oeuvre before I write about it, and just rely on hearsay to opine about it. That at least puts us on equal footing.
Then again, I really don’t need to read it because I've read it a hundred times before. In papers and magazines. I've also heard similar rants on the radio and seen people talking about it on the tube. Some of them have the feeling of a Sunday sermon. Jeremiads are a popular choice. Others have a nervous hand wringing tone. Some, like Mr. Weingarten, apparently try to use humor. That, at least, is a unique approach.
But the message is always the same. The Internet (digital media, blogs, twitter, Facebook, microblogs, user-created content, etc. etc.) and other forms of popular media will be the death of (Are you ready?…take a deep breath everyone) SERIOUS journalism. Serious is always said in capital letters in this case so that the great unwashed, will know that it's, well, serious.
First let me establish my credentials as a SERIOUS journalist. First, I'm an old fud. I've been working in this field for 35 years now. I've written for newspapers in Canada and the US, including the great Christian Science Monitor. I've worked for the CBC in Canada and NPR in the US. I'm a Nieman Fellow (that's my attempt at SERIOUS name dropping.)
I've been working online for about 20 years now, sometimes in combo with print and radio, sometimes only online. I also worked for the ONA for a few years as a part-time executive director, back when people thought ONA meant "Only Nubile Amazons" or "On No Account." Yes, after working in almost every form of journalism, my old fud view is biased towards online.
I could give you lots of reasons why I think Mr. Weingarten and his ilk fear the future, because I think that is at least part of what's happening here. Instead, I recommend you watch the excellent series Michael Lewis did for the BBC several years ago called "The Future Just Happened." Of particular interest will be the part about how technologies that begin at the fringes of society eventually undermine the priesthoods at the center, and how those priesthoods deal with the loss of control over the "message" as the means of control opens up to a large number of people. (I suppose Mr. Weingarten might not like being lumped in with a bunch of other fuds in a 'priethood', but you get my drift.) The whines are always the same – the purity of the message is lost, these people don’t know what they're doing, only we can be trusted with this task…you know the drill.
But I have to stop now. I'm getting ponderous. Stroking my beard stuff. Well, if I had one. But here's the bottom line. Nothing is going to change. The ball is rolling and it's not gonna stop. The task for us, as journalists, is to learn how to harness these new technologies so that SERIOUS journalism does not vanish. That's kinda what the ONA is really all about and what its conferences are all about.
And for my final note…wait. Is that Gene Weingarten with a piece of bacon strapped to him? Oh. Too bad. It doesn't make me LOL.
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