Being a Real Journalist

Captain's Quarters takes a close look at a nasty little piece from some self-important windbag named Nick Coleman writing in the Star Tribune. Captain Ed does an excellent job dealing with the entire piece, but there was one part I want to address in depth.

Do bloggers have the credentials of real journalists? No. Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world.

Bloggers don't know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their every thought with the moon. Like graffiti artists, they tag the public square -- without editors, correction policies or community standards. And so their tripe is often as vicious as it is vacuous.

First of all, what credentials do "real journalists" have? Have they been granted a license to report by the American Journalists Association? Have they passed the journalistic equivalent of the bar exam? Or is it that they went to college and studied journalism and earned a degree in it?

Well here's a bit of news for you Mr. Coleman. I went to college and studied journalism and made it all the way through to earn my degree. And for the benefit of those who hold "The Journalist" in such high esteem:

BEING A JOURNALIST IS NOT THAT BIG A DEAL

Essentially you gather information either through observation or research and you write it down. It's not really necessary for you to write it down all that well either. In fact it's generally preferred if your syntax is on the simplistic side. With the advent of software such as Microsoft Word it is not even necessary that you know how to spell better than the average third grader.

Mr. Coleman clearly knows little or nothing weblogs. Every reader is an editor and their feedback is instant. Errors are made, but they do not stand unchallenged for long. Correction policies are as varied as there are blogs, just as they are as varied as there are newspapers. I have observed however, that most bloggers do not wait several days and burry their corrections in the on-line equivalent of the bottom of page 8.

One thing Mr. Coleman clearly knows well is viscous, vacuous tripe. Only I guess he would see his is more real.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 07:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment