Why bloggers will never be journalists
I wrote a story on Hop-on the vaporware mobile phone manufacturer 6 days ago outlining why its claims were vaporware and whats going on there.
One blogger Rob Jackson followed up on the story and digged a little deeper and got into a really great story.
This week Nilay Patel @Engadget, John Mahoney @Gizmodo, Eric Zeman @phonescoop , Brian Heater @gearlog and lots of others wrote their stories completely based on a press release from the company, done no research whatsoever when a standard Google blog search would have given them enough information to dump the story.
Huge fail on this one for these guys.
What do you think?
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22 comments...What do you think?
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Pat: Tragic but not surprising.
You in your position as a high profile entrepreneur can probably safely criticise and critique while anyone else raising the question will be rudely snubbed. The blogosphere is replete with ill-researched, poorly substantiated opinion pieces, never mind how many have made their careers peddling them and how many unquestioning acolytes they have managed to gain.
I have a long essay pending on this - I shall link to you when I publish it. Thanks for saying it aloud.
I agree with the sentiment for sure. Two different breeds of course… However this isn’t to say that all Journalists are bad. Bloggers just uncover the lazy ones. There are plenty of Journos out and about today doing a kick-ass job of covering the news etc…
As they say: Cream rises to the top.
The blogosphere, moreoever, Social Media is the great leveller; completely bringing down the barriers to entry on almost every domain.
So when Joe Bloggs from Southend can write a better than £30k a year FT Journo, people sit up and take notice.
To take it back to my first point… I’ve always considered the best reaction for any Journo to the advent of blogging is to step up their game. (Most) Journalists are trained news hounds with a nose for a good story and a talent for telling it.
Those that exercise those skills will carry on doing well, those that don’t - well, they’ll get found out… As you’ve eloquently pointed out above.
J
PS I remember Ewan having a rant about something like a while back - check it out if you missed. V Amusing.
http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2008/07/3uk_are_on_a_mission_in_other_news_i_almost_beat_the_crap_out_of_the_mainstream_media_today.html
1. Pat, if you’re suggesting journalists are better, why do you think that ? Read “Flat Earth News ” by Nick Evans for the horrible truth
2. James, Journos on the FT only get £30k a year ?
3. James, “Most) Journalists are trained news hounds with a nose for a good story and a talent for telling it. ” Are you serious ? Read “Flat Earth News ” by Nick Evans for the horrible truth
I think the title is misleading. I agree that not many bloggers are journalists, ever will be, or purport to be.
However, many bloggers are better journalists than most working the rags.
To state ‘why bloggers will never be journalists’ is the kind of headline I’d expect from the Sun
- it’s titillating but misleading.
@shefaly thanks
@whatley agreed, love when Ewan does one of those rants, thats why I am one of his biggest fans
@Fegus @alfie
those blogs I mentioned aren’t a small bedroom/hobby type blog, these are professional organizations who have the power to drive up/down a public stock which was the whole point of Hop-on putting out that press release.
It would have been a 10 second job here to smell a rat, most journalists I know would have picked this up as complete crap.
that’s my point
And that’s a perfectly valid point Pat, I get that - but tar/brush/chickens in the title.
Reading the other comments (and subsequent responses) I’m reminded of the whole ‘Old vs New PR’ argument.. In the same way it’s ‘a 10 second job to smell a rat’ - it’s merely one extra click to find out that little bit about X blogger or X community. It seems the transparency of the Social Media landscape is good for uncovering those who are just lazy (or at least complacent) in their jobs. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but you get the idea.. (added by Mobile using Mippin)
Agree with Fergus, the issue here is not bloggers or journalists. It’s a mixture of the nature of person and the nature of what they do.
In both you will find good investigative types who take nothing at face value, but you will also and more often find those who are driven by time=money= “publish what comes in the door and gives us content/column inches for the least possible outlay”
I find it kind of depressingly understandable, but not defendable!
The title is misleading and almost skews the very valid point made. In my opinion.
I feel that the crimes purported above are as common in physical/professional as they are in virtual/amateur.
I feel that the act of journalism as a state (or if you believe standard definitions it has to be a profession), is something that will always have good and bad.
By commenting on the bad, you too are a journalist - as were the people who hopped on a bandwagon with little or know insight or rhetorical depth.
I would, at this juncture, say ’so its all good’ but actually as you have pointed out correctly, its not all good. But then that adds to the rich tapestry of citizen comment.
Perhaps we need the dark to appreciate the light. I certianly feel we need the Status Quo solely so we can smash it to pieces (more about that here: http://www.jonathanmacdonald.com/?cat=19)
In the end - although it could be seen as ‘better’ for us all to have the same levels of morality and integrity - lets not write off bloggers or citizen commentators as not being somehow worthy of a ‘profession’ which frankly contains as much shit as any other.
And when you look closely, as much good too.
Have to agree that the title is inaccurate and distracts from an otherwise valid post…I think some of these professional organizations need to take a good, hard look at who they are hiring, their methods, and the quality of what they produce. Thank God bloggers like you, Pat, are around to call bullshit. Which is rather the point: Some bloggers suck, some bloggers rock; ditto journalists. Let’s deal on an individual basis or we risk clouding a pretty important debate.
I think there’s a distinction that isn’t being made here.
Sites like Engadget and Gizmodo are news sources. They pride themselves on having access to inside information in the tech industy, and on breaking news stories.
In addition to being news sites, they are all commercial sites. The bloggers are paid. They are, in fact, incentivised to crank out posts. They may have a daily posting quota, get paid per post, or get bonuses based on traffic. While this churns a lot of paid ad views, it does not encourage investigative journalism. A lot of the stuff you see on those sites is re-purposed press releases with no fact checking at all.
Why? Because you want to be the first to “break” the press release. If you post first, you become the primary source everyone links back to and there are all kinds of benefits to that for a commercial site.
This is all VERY different than non-commercial blogging. Paid tech bloggers, bloggers at properties like the HuffPo and Kos, and even on sites like Valley Wag - these people are much more closely aligned to traditional journalism than your average blogger is because these are sites that break and make news online.
So while it would be nice to hold these people to some magical higher standard, it isn’t going to happen. It’s a different arena. And realistically, in the land of the ten minute news cycle, a different standard.
What on earth are you talking about? My post is ~150 words of pure skepticism, starting with the fact that no one at Engadget has never seen an actual Hop-on device. If you’re going to criticize my work, you’d better be damn sure to have actually read it first.
Nilay, I don’t think linking to previous un-investigated Engadget stories and re-treading a press release on the day whilst saying you are “a little skeptical” counts as calling BS.
It isn’t that that products are vaporware - it’s that the company is vaporware. Did you ever find out who placed that 100,000 unit order? Is there a big, honking chance it was nobody and the press release was entirely made up?
Call the company. Call the guy. Call their “media partners” like the NFL or whoever and do some actual primary source research here if you want to wave your lily white credentials around.
C’mon.
Check out Google News:
http://news.google.com/news?q=Android%20%22Hop%20on%20%22&num=100&hl=de&lr=lang_de&as_qdr=w&filter=0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn
It really seems that only blogs and presswires brought this story.
Haha! Through a blog backdoor the story now made it into the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/27/AR2008102700055.html
Well, at least two bloggers have done a good journalistic job of the piece. Two out of seven named isn’t that bad. I reckon it’s about the same rate as among “real” journalists.