Blogs

My grandfather telephoned me tonight and said I was posing problems that everyone knows about, and what is needed is solutions. What's your point, he asked.

So, my grandfather should have known better. I'm not known for keeping quiet about what I think needs to be done.

But for now two solutions that aren't mine.

One directly media:
http://politifact.com/

Jay Rosen blogs at idealab:
http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2007/11/cleveland-plain-dealer-deals-w.html

I comment:

Great roundup!

Unfortunately, many in media share this if-you-engage-in-society-you-can't-be-a-journalist attitude. A session at the Online News Association conference essentially asked "Can a journalist have a blog" (and answered, "sort of.")

This is despicable.

It goes on Root Truth because it's so blatantly despicable that the news media should be covering it in a way that conveys its despicableness. But of course the media is a key part of how the despicable and absurd can be presented as ordinary and commonplace. George Orwell's line about imprecise words softening the outlines of hard facts like a soft snow on a garden.

(Actually Orwell's quotation is nothing like that, but it makes the same point.)

Glenn Greenwald puts it this way: "What Happened to the Senate’s ‘60-Vote Requirement’?"

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/fea/20071029/202/2331

October 29, 2007
Joshua Breitbart is policy director for People's Production House.
http://peoplesproductionhouse.org/

This was part of news reporting with opinion? Plan Mexico edition but didn't fit. It should be its own Idealab post.

As suggested in Toronto at the "can a journalist have a blog" discussion, we need (dare I say it) objective standards for journalism that have nothing to do with who the reporter is, what they think about progress, or where they ate dinner last night.

This was taken out of this poste on reporting with opinion even though it fit very well with the topic-- it just broke the flow.

Now that the entirety of every article is put straight to the front page on the Idealab blog, I feel (slightly) self-conscious about posting (some of) my ramblings directly there. So, here's one waiting in the wings for its makeup and last-minute memorization of lines.

Follow-up to DC Media Localism hearing:

http://www.freepress.net/press/release.php?id=296

Mexicans Appalled by Scenes From Flooded State

By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: November 4, 2007
MEXICO CITY, Nov. 3 — Mexicans were gripped Saturday by images of dramatic rescues from flooding in the southeastern state of Tabasco, where much of the state capital, Villahermosa, was underwater and the governor said that thousands of people waited on their rooftops for help to arrive.

As far as Google and Yahoo are concerned, this is the first occurence of the phrase "all reporting should be investigative reporting" on a web page.

Yet in my experience more than a few crusty editors, idealistic young reporters, and journalism professors will evince a belief that all reporting should be investigative. From the crusty editor types, it's likely to be phrased as "all reporting is investigative reporting"— anything else isn't worthy of the label reporting or journalism. All too often, that dismisses the subject, when a little investigating would suggest that precious little reporting is investigative.

(This, for me, was the Alice-in-Wonderland session at the Online News Association conference. The question no one asked, which might have put an end to the foolishness of a roomfull of professional reporters discussing if they had a right to voice their opinions: if a journalist takes a public position on free speech issues (as they were doing at that moment), can he or she write about speech?)