SAME OLD STORY

Journalism is a volatile industry. Poynter Online ponders if journalism is a 'toxic culture' (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=142370). Despite the various avenues that are opening up; including blogging, citizen journalism and convergence, it seems that the same problems, if not more, still persist. Why is it that journalism seems to be the one industry where boundaries between inferior and superior are drawn based on organization size. Where values and standards at times seem to drain and restrict writers immensely. Where the industry and job security seem at once dynamically changing yet negatively uncertain. All this from an industry that is the lifeblood of our knowledge base. From an industry that informs citizens of important issues and events which, especially in western nations, serve to support our democratic structures.
The Poynter Online article suggests that 'good journalism doesn't change much. But if it is changing significantly, it must be dying. Which in turn means the world is in big trouble'. New skills are needed as organizations and then journalists have to adapt. This is where the problem lies. As the structure of the industry bends and changes the dynamics of individualism come in to play. Personal traits and the stubborness of journalists, who for so long have followed the same principles and structures, suddenly come in to play. With no clear cut or certain structure it could be argued that the stability of the industry has a domino affect on all involved. Instead of looking entirely at the 'demands of the modern day consumer' maybe it's time to keep things simple again and let the industry, and the common skill set of its' workers, dictate the direction.

DECODING WRITING ITSELF

Ever since the advent of the printing press man has felt the innate need to document things. To record history. To pass on tales of days gone. In fact it has been argued that the desire of man to reproduce is in fact due to a need to 'live forever', by way of passing on their genetics (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/286/5437/23). Perhaps the act of writing and publishing follows this chain of thought. Exactly what makes people write, to feel the urge to put pen to paper or, in a modern sense, to put finger to keyboard?
In the end we’re all readers and the act of reading is an active choice to receive—and also to participate, to imagine, to interpret. It’s a kind of gift we make to writers, in fact—just as much as their writing may seem a kind of gift to us (http://www.readreader.org/actOfReading.html). Although news writing and journalism follows the principle of hard news reporting; complete with a 'pyramid structure' and author-content 'detachment', there must still be a picture painted in the reader's mind. If this is not acheived, whether via facts in hardline journalism or vividness in a feature article, the reader will soon be lost. There seems to be an invisible connection that is drawn between author and reader despite their anonymity to each other via their joint cognitive dissemination of the content. The author as creator, the reader as essentially decoder. Perhaps this is why people feel such an urge to record history in any shape or form, be it photography or writing.

THE JOURNALISTIC BALANCING ACT

Today's marketplace has changed with the advent of e-commerce and global trade. Changes have been necessary, and demanded by consumers, in many industries. The media industry is no exception. Global reach is now possible for newspapers, media conglomorates and even small boutique magazines, all because of what we deem 'the world wide web'. A journalist's job has changed also as the industry now revolves and evolves around an increased reliance on immersive multimedia and digitalized content, things not deemed possible or necessary merely a decade ago. As blogging becomes the new wave of online publishing it was inevitable that journalists themselves would become involved, or tangled as some may say, in the new trend.
Blogging has provided a new frontier for 'armchair journalists' and 'real-time' communication. But it also presents problems due to its subjective quality. It seems blogging cannot be quantified as objective journalism, it escapes the realm of straight and simple reporting. Where as yesteryear an author was hidden in the background behind layers of truth and objectivity, blogging can essentially push the journalist forward infront of the reporting, as the face of the story itself. Increasingly, as The National Press Club explored in their recent National Ethics Week program, the modern day journalist is being asked to delve into the realms of blogging, but doesn't it compromise the very ethics or objectivity requirement that a journalist swears by? In a world where 'fine lines' are continually tred, shouldn't we leave blogging and personalized author content to the armchair journalist? Shouldn't we not flirt with the subjective and thus keep some semblance of 'reality' firmly entrenched in reporting? Afterall, if you stop and think about it, the media is an industry that helps make sense of our modernday, fast-moving reality.

CAUGHT IN THE NET

It seems that the internet has undergone a major change of direction, at least in consumer trend, over the last few years. Whereas the prominent use historically was to find information and e-trade, we have now seen a shift of focus towards networking and communication.
Email communication has always been a staple of 'the net' and such communication capabilities developed progressively after the widespread consumer adoption of the internet. Originally businesses were essentially experimenting in the internet's infancy, clamoring to 'jump on the bandwagon'. Now, ss multimedia technologies have allowed more creativity and refinement, it has been an inherent requirement of companies to keep abreast of changes in order to stay ahead of the pack and in an increasingly competitive and global marketplace this has been vital to success. The internet essentially provides an intangible face or facade to a company that can project a certain image or desired stance in the marketplace.
Looking beyond corporate businesses we can see that the internet and networking has become just as integral for the everyday citizen as they attempt to 'sell' themselves to prospective employees, organizations or even simply peers. Networks such as Facebook, MySpace and now Ning are continually evolving in content and becomming ingrained in the day to day communications and 'functioning' of a huge number of youth, students and graduates. In this dog eat dog world, it seems the internet, and its associated technologies, have become the weapons of today that provide a competitive advantage in both personal and business spheres.

GROWING PAINS

'To blog or not to blog' is a question journalists, both professional or otherwise, ask themselves at some point. We have all heard the debate on whether blogging can be classified as a legitimate form of writing or merely self expression, and if 'the blog' has a future. Like all forms of communication evolution is both inevitable and necessary. Blogs are no different, and their success or otherwise lies in the evolution of the platform.
A lot of things are superseded and become essentially obsolete. Blogs face the challenge of growing within an industry that consistently revolves around new ideas, fads and the ever-present demands of immediacy. Consider the following for instance. First we were impressed be emails simple, and 'amazing', capabilities to bring people together from all parts of the world. Soon we would be able to add pictures and attachments. Then instant messaging or 'IM' came along and the process was even more immediate and in 'real time'. Forums created online communities to create assimilation and now blogging ultimately does all of the above and faces the challenge of becomming bigger and more important without losing the 'necessary' or 'wow factor' from the online community. The 'Tech Beat blog' on Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/02/the_future_of_b.html) feels that 'tagging', a concept widely used for labelling people in pictures in programs such as Facebook, will provide blogs with a 'wider net' on which to base their substantiality or importance. It argues that people will be able to search for issues or keywords rather than just relying on a membership or feed to a particular blog. Thereby the 'net' will be cast onto more blogs or similar articles etc that contain the area of interest. The blog's final comment sums up the argument rather well:
"Today, you might send an interesting article with a personal comment to your 40 best friends via e-mail. Tomorrow, you might comment on it on your blog, and your comment would reach 4 million people, including all your friends. Not bad, huh?"

ALL BLOGGED OUT!

So here i am, sitting, well actually lying down on my bed at a very obtuse angle; with my laptop sitting patiently in front of me. The cursor blinks repeatedly without hesitation making my blank mind churn with a certain sense of anxiety. I think i may have been struck by writer's block...well, perhaps 'blogger's block!' In the midst of all this i start to wonder if writing and blogging are in fact the same thing. Are more traditional forms of writing and blogging created with the same structure or is blogging in fact of a more 'permeable substance'?
A blog i stumbled across (http://neil.brown.name/blog/20050521222535) pertained a similar pondering. "I am a person who is keen on structure. Not everything I do it totally structured, but where structure exists I like to find and make use of it. The thing about a blog is it is largely unstructured. It is just a time-ordered series of thoughts", the author said on his blog site. Is that what we are missing with blogs? Is there any real objective form to them, even if perhaps a renowned author blogs briefly on his own page? Are blogs not just a glorified diary entry?
Perhaps the answer can be found in more traditional print media, medians that have been around for centuries. Despite their objective stance, print media that is created and distributed daily involve a form of subjectivity. Someone's particular 'newsworthy judgement' is involved in the publishing decision. Even a reporter, who usually is contained and somewhat bound by the rules of his industry and company, cannot escape involving his individual predispositions and traits in objective reporting. So perhaps blogging is not so far removed from traditional print media as we may have thought.