BARBS

Here are a few things I am wondering about after the news events of this week:

1. If (when?) most (all?) journalists are soon to be come independent “backpack” practitioners — you’ve got all the tools, you’re on your own, good luck! — who will rescue those who, either through youth, inexperience, stupidity, or sheer bad luck, find themselves under arrest and in big trouble? What if, say, they not only don’t work for an actual organization with actual resources and support systems; but also don’t happen to work for a guy who happens to know the former President of the United States? What then? Say what you will about (mostly) corporate-owned “old media” companies (I know I certainly do); they do have systems in place for preventing what happened to Euna Lee and Laura Ling, and when it does happen, they have a bunch of back channels for protecting their people and getting them home safely (yes, I know there are exceptions; see, e.g., Daniel Pearl).

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I’ve been finding lots of good stuff out there as I spin around the Googles.

On why it’s premature to give up on journalism education: here’s a Q&A with CUNY’s J-School Dean Steve Shepard, who’s really talking the “new media” talk these days. Then there’s this good analysis from my former college classmate Will Bunch, who now runs the Attytood blog, in an OJR piece entitled “Don’t Dismiss Journalism Schools Just Because Newspapers Are In Trouble”:

“You can look at it two ways,” Bunch says. “The core values of journalism aren’t really changing. You have to understand what makes a good story, how to report it, and how to report fairly and with integrity. It was the exact same with Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper 150 years ago or with newfangled websites. That hasn’t changed.”

“What is radically different are important secondary things that schools have to account for. Journalists today need to understand that news is now a two way conversation between you and the audience. Don’t talk down to the audience. Audience members are active participants—they comment on stories, participate as sources, and provide information and tips. Schools can maintain their core values and work on that.”

“Schools also need to teach that journalists need to think as entrepreneurs. You don’t just write a story; you have to find an audience for it. That’s been ignored by many journalists, and it’s critical today.”

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Brian Stelter has written two excellent pieces for today’s New York Times, and whether he intended them to be read as a pair I don’t know, but together they paint quite a picture of the state of foreign news coverage.

The first article described the real-time criticism on Twitter of CNN’s (and other cablers’) relative lack of live news coverage of the weekend’s protests in Iran. “The channels largely took the weekend off as Tehran exploded in protests after Iran’s presidential election,” reads Stelter’s lede graf, and that led “untold thousands” to use the label “CNNfail” on Twitter to vent their frustrations.

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Here’s how Bernard Lunn, COO at ReadWriteWeb, answers his own question in an interesting blog post:

Yes, they would have.

We don’t need to protect journalism with public money or grants. The greater social good will be delivered by thousands of people on the ground reporting what is happening. That massive flow will be analyzed and edited (”curated”) by a small number of experts who are motivated and trained to uncover the truth.

It won’t be perfect. But the current system isn’t perfect either. It is fair to say, though, that scumbags won’t rest any easier. They will still be exposed.

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There’s a ragged-edge snippet of paper that’s been sitting on my desk for the past several weeks. It says, “All things good are simple.” I only know that I wrote it down after seeing it someplace, and I have been keeping it in plain view because it really does sum up how I feel about just about everything in life: all things good are simple; most things not-so-good are also the wrong kind of difficult.

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While pruning my Delicious bookmarks this afternoon, I came across this little tidbit that just about sums up my working life:

There’s nothing quite like working in the TV biz. It’s an intoxicating mix of controlled and uncontrolled chaos with a collection of personalities both lovable and detestable.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

(The entire post, should you wish to read it, is here.)