Hard core.
That’s the only way to describe my decade as a traditional journalist. A profession that has been thrown under the bus by my blogging colleagues. Traditional journalism doesn’t get it. They are a dying breed.
When I tackled a story I only had one thing in mind- to bring the people the information they needed. I was a very old school journalist and prided myself on sharing unbiased and up to the minute news on wherever I was sent that day.
Fires. Crimes. City Council meetings. Red Carpet galas. Accidents. Weather trouble. Celebrity court hearings. Deaths.
My job was always clear. My objective very straight forward. Get to a scene, collect as much information as possible, share said information with the public.
My politics never came into play. My feelings and emotions buried. I was a journalist. I was a professional. I was there for you, the listener, the viewer.
I was very good at what I did. My investigative work had cities spending millions and landed some nice hardware on my desk. But it’s not about me. This is just to lay the background on why I struggle with the current state of journalism and the impact of new media. And struggle I do.
Make no mistake, I’m leading the charge to incorporate social media into traditional journalism. I’ve spoken on the topic at universities, conferences, and in various podcasts, twitter debates, etc.
Citizen journalists and traditional journalists are not the same. You can combine the two, but in the process you kill traditional journalism.
You can’t be a reporter and share your feelings on a subject matter. This is no-no #1 in Journalism 101 and destroys your credibility. If you open your mouth, you are henceforth a columnist, pundit, and/or blogger.
The end. Period.
This does not mean you can’t break news, investigate, or report. But it does mean you will always be taken with a grain of salt, and you are NOT ever to be considered a journalist. At least not in the traditional sense.
I am no longer a traditional journalist. I gave that up the minute I opened my mouth. I am now a blogger. A pundit. A columnist.
What traditional journalists can do is use these social media tools in their reporting. Use Facebook to promote a story. Use twitter to promote a story, use your online presence in a blog or site fashion to report .. use them as TOOLS, not as bully pulpits. That is the role of reporter. That is the role of journalist.
But I fear the abuse of these social media tools have left us with few, if not zero, real journalists. Everyone is now a social media hybrid citizen journalist. A term I loathe. I prefer to call you MOS… that’s Man on the Street.
You are all witnesses, pundits, columnists, opinion makers. You can blog all day long with facts and opinion and speculation and use all the tools and really make a difference…but that doesn’t make you a journalist.
And I fear there are none left. No one can seem to keep their mouth shut. No one can seem to ignore the siren song of tweeting how they felt about reporting that story, or blogging the ‘behind the scenes’ of their interviews in a note over on Facebook.
When I began blogging I gave up my title as journalist. It’s as simple as that. Why? Because I respect journalism. I respect what real reporters do. I respect the profession and I certainly know what it is to be a professional journalist.
I tell this to journalism students now and they look at me stunned. How can they possibly live in a world of Facebook and Twitter and blogs where their mother’s are giving status updates on their personal lives?
It’s simple…they can’t. Traditional journalist may be an impossible feat and title for anyone entering the field. I’m not sure any real reporters make their way out of this muck that is social media. You can use the social media tools all you want, but the minute you show your human side you are pounced on for being anything other than a straight news gal.
Maybe journalists were always the ideal, but never really existed. Maybe we all strived to be straight forward and unbiased and worked our tails off to make sure we got you the news and you got it opinion free. I know I did. And I also know I firmly renounce that title now that I’ve opened up my life to the world. What bothers me is other’s haven’t. They continue to label themselves journalists without really having the back ground or education or even experience. While I laude the power of the average person and their blog, and it’s power to enact change… I cringe at what it’s done to those who have worked their entire lives to bring you the news.
Maybe this is my romanticized version of news. Maybe it’s my plea to find the light inside the darkness of so much noise and information and my hope that the cream rises to the top. But more and more I’m finding it’s not the cream, it’s the crazy, loud, brash, and obnoxious. Social media has pitted the serious journalist against the shock jock, and America loves a good train wreck.
So instead of the economy we get Jersey Shore and instead of showing all the hard working people busting their butts to free an Iranian woman from being stoned, we get the Tea Party rhetoric that feminists aren’t doing a thing to help. The noise is beating out the truth. Fiction and lies are louder than those toiling behind the scenes, with no time to defend themselves because they are actually working to make change happen.
And normally it would be the part of the journalist to find these stories, to call them out, to present the information to the public. But they are too caught up playing catch up to notice.
Maybe I’m just lamenting the passing of time. Maybe this is my ‘get off my traditional journalist lawn’ post. Or maybe I just refused to see what was always there.
Lois Lane is dead.
Or was she every really a traditional journalist? After all she was fucking Superman.
