Comments on: Helping the Almost-Journalists Do Journalism

By: The “almost-journalism” plan | Antony Loewenstein

The “almost-journalism” plan | Antony Loewenstein — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:10:49 +0000

[...] advocacy journalism a future model for investigative [...]

By: Media Re:public

Media Re:public — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:45:05 +0000

Advocacy or journalism?…

Is Amnesty International a media organization? Should they (or any other activist non profit organization) aim to be one? Dan Gillmor has started a great discussion on his blog about this. He says we should be finding ways to get human rights, environm…

By: Almost Journalists « The Fresh Press

Almost Journalists « The Fresh Press — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:15:44 +0000

[...] To continue reading, visit: Center for Citizen Media [...]

By: James from Oz

James from Oz — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:31:16 +0000

I come a bit late to this debate, but if anyone’s still reading … isn’t Journalistic fairness a bit of an anachronism in the internet age? Even-handedness is almost never achieved by a single writer in a single item. But it can be achieved by editors ensuring that antagonistic advocates get their right of reply. This was a challenge back in the years when a largely monolithic community of journalists monopolized the public channels, putting a huge responsibility for fairness on their shoulders. Now, journalists’ main responsibility is to verify facts beyond just the easy Google-research. Blogs and email letter columns now give opposing advocates a full opportunity to exercise right of reply, and the main problem is thoughtful voices being drowned out in the babble. Why teach advocates to tack comments from overly-talkative “experts” onto their press releases, when you can invite others to reply in full and in their own time? What the media needs now is more editors keeping the channels open, reducing clutter, and if necessary actively eliciting contributions from the quieter minorities. Then we can say John Stuart Mill’s marketplace of ideas has finally arrived.

By: Moshe

Moshe — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:07:06 +0000

The way to get attention is via advocacy ONLY, taken in the sense of basically inverting the list you give above – a) rant at people who disagree with you b) ignore facts and data that are contrary to your own stand c) strip away any disagreements and nuances.

By: Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:05:46 +0000

We are obviously not going to agree. But I have responded directly to your points as far as I can tell. And I don’t see how the attention-getting phenomenon differs in blogs from its effect on traditional media. Somehow people who care end up gravitating to the quality stuff. They could use more help doing it, but that’s another issue.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:34:02 +0000

While it may be true in a relative sense that there's more support for "worldview journalism" than "called-objective" journalism, even if so, that doesn't establish there's much support in an absolute sense for either. But more importantly, it doesn't respond to the point that if an organization is doing advocacy-not-journalism, they have little incentive to conform their work to the journalistic standards you give. And the structure of the bogosphere, the intense competition to get attention where accuracy is at best a matter of personal indulgence and at worst an outright drag, gives major incentives against those journalistic standards.

By: Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:34:09 +0000

There’s more financial support for journalism espousing a world view than for journalism that calls itself “objective” — that was my point. Clearly there’s more support for celebrity trivia and garbage than either of the above.

By: Josh Wilson

Josh Wilson — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:41:03 +0000

Because advocates do great investigations but slant their reports, you wind up shutting the door for wider public discourse because “that report is biased.”

Furthermore, the topic itself gets isolated from discourse because the fact of that bias enables commercial outlets to ignore the report — it’s biased, after all — until the public need that motivated the advocacy report becomes unignorable — in other words, when it becomes a crisis.

This makes the commercial mainstream perpetually behind the times on a host of vital issues. There’s low-hanging fruit, everywhere.

At Newsdesk.org we’ve always seen this as an opportunity — to start with those thorough but biased investigations, then use that as a starting point for broad, deep and accessible coverage for all, not just for the advocate’s community.

josh

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:09:54 +0000

Wasn’t that clear?

There’s very little support (not absolute zero impossible never happen – strawman) for advocacy journalism, that is, “a strong point of view” PLUS “a) listen hard to people who disagree with you; b) hunt for facts and data that are contrary to your own stand; and c) reflect disagreements and nuances in what you tell the rest of us.”

That’s what gets rewarded. Now, it’s not the absolutely only way to get attention – for example, being a celebrity or being very rich works also. But over and over in this thread, I and others keep telling you that being journalistic isn’t rewarded.

Honestly, why is this a hard point? Is being an A-lister so blinding? It strikes me as one of the most obvious aspects of the bogosphere, where even the evangelists sometimes get close to saying it outright (the “attention economy” – NOT the “accuracy economy”).