Journalism can’t be a one-way street anymore

By Michael Becker | Published: February 7, 2010

I don’t know who made up the rule that news reporters aren’t sup­posed to respond to pub­lic com­ments about and cri­tiques of their work. Maybe it’s not even a rule. Maybe its one of those arbi­trary rules that some­body thought was a good idea once upon a time, though it really had no basis in life — like not end­ing an English sen­tence with a preposition.

Either way, it’s about time we got over our­selves as some insti­tu­tion of capital-J Journalism and responded to read­ers in the com­ments sec­tions of our sites, engaged with them on Twitter and answered their ques­tions on Facebook.

As Robert Quigley at Old Media New Tricks writes, “People seem to think we’re a giant, uncar­ing media cor­po­ra­tion. They’re pleas­antly sur­prised when they get a real human response.”

For the sake of argu­ment though, what’s the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for main­tain­ing a wall of silence? Why should we not respond to reader ques­tions and con­cerns? Anyone?

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A third as prolific as Twitter seems to think

By Michael Becker | Published: February 7, 2010

In case you were check­ing up on me, my Twitter account is one of many affected by a bug that some­how mul­ti­plied our tweet counts by a fac­tor of roughly three. I have not tweeted more than 11,300 times, but if you want to think of me as being that pro­lific, be my guest.

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Send a poor man some drivel

By Michael Becker | Published: February 6, 2010

I used to have a hobby. I would pick up local alter­na­tive news­pa­pers, get out my red pen and copy edit their sto­ries, right there on the page. It was fun, and it kept me sharp.

Sadly, the hobby has started to drag on me lately. Often, I can’t fin­ish edit­ing a sin­gle arti­cle, let alone all the sto­ries in an issue. I find myself drift­ing away from the story about halfway through — about the time the writer also drifts away from his or her point and takes the exit into Digression City.

I don’t think the local writ­ing has got­ten worse. It’s as bad as it always has been. I do think that my tol­er­ance for poor writ­ing has atro­phied. This is likely because the gro­cery store I now go to most doesn’t have the same alt paper rack that my old store had. I am less exposed to shoddy writ­ing, and I’m los­ing my immunity.

So, I make this plea. If you read this blog and know of any good alter­na­tive papers with Web sites full of dri­vel, let me know so I can get back in practice.

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Alan Mutter wants journalists to get paid a fair rate

By Michael Becker | Published: February 5, 2010

Quality jour­nal­ism takes train­ing, time and tenac­ity. Although it’s easy to fill space with words, pic­tures and videos that are pro­duced quickly and on the cheap, down-and-dirty “jour­nal­ism” is the intel­lec­tual equiv­a­lent of empty calories.

The more empty calo­ries you con­sume, the unhealth­ier you get. It won’t be good for our democ­racy – let alone our self-esteem as jour­nal­ists – if we attempt to nour­ish vital local, state and national con­ver­sa­tions with the jour­nal­is­tic equiv­a­lent of Ding Dongs and McNuggets.

via newsosaur.blogspot.com

Cross-posted from my Posterous site at Becker’s Online Journal

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Content Creation: Sharing, remixing, blogging, and more | Pew Internet & American Life Project

By Michael Becker | Published: February 4, 2010
via pewinternet.org

A new Pew study shows that young peo­ple use the heck out of the Internet; they just don’t seem to be using it to blog. They also use the heck out of social net­work­ing sites, just not Twitter.

Cross-posted from my Posterous site at Becker’s Online Journal

Posted in Miscellany | 1 Comment