With Attitudes Like These, No Wonder Traditional Journalism Is Dying

Lostremote.com has an astounding post: a traditional print journalist ranted that a TV station allowing its viewers to select one story for the nightly newscast was the death of standards. The station, in best-practices Web 2.0 fashion, invited him on the show to debate the issue publicly.

And this is how the journalist responded:

“I’m told that this multiple-choice reporter has called me out with a public invitation, on her blog or her twitter or whatever, to debate her before her ubiquitous Web camera with its on-line audience of literally dozens of voyeurs and three or four lonely, misfit bloggers who spend all their time communicating only with each other. I need not lend my experience and credibility to draw her a crowd.”

Talk about clueless! This kind of arrogance might have worked for The New York Times 100 years ago, but it sure doesn’t work now for an unknown journalist working for a newspaper in Arkansas! What he doesn’t get is that he has no credibility with the audience he’s rejecting (other than he apparently writes a blog on politics)–and that his appearance on the show might have built credibility for his position, and might have gone viral, being seen by tens of thousands.

Now, mind you–I am trained as a traditional print journalist. I have enormous respect for people who follow the old principles and standards–who do research before they write, who understand the importance of objectivity, and who try to tell the important stories that are very hard to find on mainstream broadcast media–and I’m horrified by the decline both in journalistic standards within a story and in the general willingness to go after a tough (and expensive) but important story. That failure in part led us to the Iraq debacle. Journalists absolutely need to ask hard questions, grapple with the answers, and filter the world for their public. In an era where we all have far too much information and limited ability to process it, we still need traditional journalists as intermediaries. Citizen journalism is vital, but it’s not the whole thing. Professional journalism is crucial, still.

But I think you can have both journalistic standards and an openness to listening to your readers/listeners/viewers. You can have deep investigative journalism and a viewpoint, even in nonprint media–look at the amazing radio/TV show, Democracy Now, if you want an example. And you can have dialog without threatening your position. I think this journo was extremely short-sighted.