[Swprograms] `Old' media, bloggers square off at conference

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`Old' media, bloggers square off at conference 
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Steve Johnson

March 14, 2005

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- What happens when you put some of the nation's best-known bloggers and other heavy-hitting media types together in a room at Harvard for a conference about the future of digital journalism?

The term "mainstream media" is invoked repeatedly, for one thing, mostly in reference to the widely agreed upon imminent doom and epic cluelessness of old-line networks and newspapers.

Everybody shows up in street clothes, instead of the presumed standard blogging attire of pajamas and fuzzy slippers.

Almost everybody, during the roundtable discussion, is simultaneously working a laptop (some are blogging the conference live) and, in some cases, a Blackberry, and when cell phones ring, there isn't the immediate feeling of censure there would be at a poetry reading.

And you leave -- after two days of to and fro about citizen journalism, ways for bloggers to earn a living, and the like -- still confused about where this is all heading, beyond into brave new worlds of jargon. If you had a dollar for every time someone said "monetize," for example, you would have been able to monetize the conference.

Titled "Whose News? Media, Technology and the Common Good," the symposium attempted to wrap its arms around some of the big issues, such as: Will people writing on, say, media for, say, the Chicago Tribune continue to have gainful employment 10 years hence? Or are we in the mainstream media ("MSM," in the jargon) all destined to become bloggers, praying that those who find our sites click on the ads so we can still afford Starbucks?

The March conference, sponsored by the Media Center of the American Press Institute and held at the headquarters of the co-sponsor, Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, didn't put it in those terms, of course.

Instead, it asked participants to discuss: "Will the traditions of professional journalism survive? Should they?" And: "How we know, how we learn, how we trust in the emerging ecosystem of participatory, always-on media."

Here, at least, people openly wondered if journalism can remain a profession, rather than a hobby, as people, especially younger people, increasingly look online first for information. Online, of course, people expect to get their information for free.

Those attending included Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine) and Jay Rosen (PressThink), two very smart and engaging bloggers and, not coincidentally, two of those who are most often quoted by the MSM.

"I'm in danger of becoming a usual suspect," said Rosen.

"I am a usual suspect," said Jarvis.

Rosen proposed that big media, under repeated fire over ethics and trust, don't really understand what is happening to them, that one of their dominant ideas has been to separate themselves from society in the name of objectivity but that the ethos emerging on the Web is one of collaboration and transparency.

"The problem isn't maintaining the separation anymore. It's how to create connections," he said, and then he spoke of "this huge gap between what most journalists know about the Web and what's actually happening on the Web."

Among the more concrete suggestions participants offered traditional journalistic enterprises: make their news archives freely available, which would help their work show up on search engines and get linked to by other sites, instead of only offering them free for a couple of weeks, as is common practice; and consider making their Web sites more interactive, allowing for some form of reader comment and elaboration on the news stories, similar to the model established by Wikipedia, the free, online, openly edited encyclopedia.

Also on hand was the man known as "THE Craig," the modest Craig Newmark, founder of classified-ad sensation Craigslist.org.

"I'm a customer-service rep," he said, to much laughter. Really, though, it's true. Craig's primary job, by choice, is sorting out the site's hassles with scammers and other bad eggs. The site, he said, is what it is not because of him or other managers, but because they listened to the ideas of the users, a formula that many recommended for MSM.

Ana Marie Cox, the infamous Wonkette, was supposed to show up, but didn't. The name badge of Cox, blogdom's lone sex symbol before Jeff Gannon, sat unclaimed until Craig, who had announced that his reason for coming was to meet her, picked it up and began wearing it.

But there were old-media types on hand, as well. "I've had enough discussion about blogs, frankly," said Len Apcar, editor of NewYorkTimes.com. Another participant, herself a blogger, said she hoped the term "blog" would disappear, and there was much agreement.

Lawrence Grossman, former president of NBC News, pointed out that people's great hopes about the Internet promoting citizen involvement sounded very similar to what they once predicted for television. Grossman repeatedly called for the survival of old-fashioned journalistic values such as fairness and accuracy and reporting, rather than the opining that occupies much of the blogosphere.

But Jarvis, a former TV Guide TV critic and creator of Entertainment Weekly who now calls himself a "blog triumphalist," argued that the blog world is actually more serious, in one sense, than big media. "You're going to find a lot of airtime devoted to Michael Jackson and very little blog time devoted to Michael Jackson," he said.

Another old-media hand, Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC World Service and Global News Division, tried to make peace between the two worlds: "We have a lot more in common than the rest of us pretend," Sambrook said. "What matters is how you report on the world, engage in the world and explain it."

Sambrook outlined several BBC initiatives involving citizens as reporters and news participants, and said that for old media to play in the new sandbox, "you've got to not be frightened ... and you've got to let go."

What was perhaps most notable, however, was that one of the most spirited defenses of traditional journalism came from a technology company executive.

"I am sitting at this table to validate the journalistic art," said Steve Cistulli of Panasonic Mobile Communications. "You people had me at hello."

He urged participants to "please solve the problems of who's going to edit the news and how it's going to be delivered, but try not to dilute the very powerful brands you've taken so long to create."

There, at least, is a suggestion that you can monetize.

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Tribune television critic Steve Johnson (sajohnson@xxxxxxxxxxx) is on a leave of absence through June, sharing in a fellowship sponsored by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. He continues to write periodically about media trends and issues.


Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune
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