10 comments

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  Simon Billing

  9 months ago

  As "real journalism" strays further from providing a true window onto news and events in favour of opinion and comment (telling us what to think) and the sound bite (giving us too little to think about) they are opening the door wide for people like John Tomlin rss@youtube.com (psycho5288) to give us the material we need to make up our own minds (and in a charming and entertaining fashion to boot)
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  Matt Harwood

  9 months ago

  Hazinski needs to define "journalism". To me, that is researching an event, trend, or situation and portraying that in written or spoken form.
  
  It is a verb. It requires no noun ("journalist"). Personally, the process is as fundamentally available for doing as "eating" is. No one goes around saying "you aren't a REAL eater", do they?
  
  Sounds like a very defensive argument to me.
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  mathewi

  9 months ago

  I agree, Matt. That's a good way of putting it.
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  shafqat

  9 months ago

  To say mainstream media vanguards are defensive would be an understatement. Great journalism has never been more in demand. Its just a question of who will deliver it - the opportunity exists for those who want so seize it, whether its bloggers or ‘mainstream journalists'. Content will always be king, and readers will go to wherever they can get the highest quality, most credible news. Instead of competing with each other, bloggers and journalists should just focus on reporting to the best of their abilities and complementing each other. Regulating citizen journalists... sheesh.
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  michael_webster

  9 months ago

  Uh, actually the entire article said:
  
  "But unlike those other professions, journalism — at least in the United States — has never adopted uniform self-regulating standards. There are commonly accepted ethical principles — two source confirmation of controversial information or the balanced reporting of both sides of a story, for example, but adhering to the principles is voluntary. There is no licensing, testing, mandatory education or boards of review. Most other professions do a poor job of self-regulation, but at least they have mechanisms to regulate themselves. Journalists do not."
  
  Hazinski is arguing that journalists ought to self-regulate, if they don't want to become just another entry at scope.com
  
  I thought he was making a pretty good point about reputation devices and the availability of self-regulation to establish credibility.
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  mathewi

  9 months ago

  I'm not sure he's making a good point at all, actually -- although
  it's difficult to tell, since his argument wanders all over the place.
  In any case, I don't see how some kind of centralized management,
  licensing or regulatory control of journalism would improve anything
  in either traditional journalism or "citizen" journalism. I'm pretty
  sure that places like the Soviet Union and North Korea have tried that
  before and it didn't really work out that well.
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  michael_webster

  1 month ago

  The Soviet Union and North Korea had licensing boards?
  
  That is just silly.
  
  The question is one of maintaining reputation.
  
  Self-regulation is always that device which wards off even more onerous government regulation.
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  Leonard Witt

  9 months ago

  You might want to see my response also published at the AJC the next day. Or you can read it without registering at the blog PJNet.org
  AJC: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stor...
  
  At the PJNet.org: http://pjnet.org/post/1656/
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  mathewi

  9 months ago

  Thanks, Leonard -- an excellent response. Although I kind of liked
  TigerHawk's take on it too :-)
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  Scott

  9 months ago

  Note that Hazinsky also owns a company, Intelligent Media Consultants, that trains journalists. From their website -
  
  "IMC has trained hundreds of journalists. We have proven programs for all aspects of news and content production. We go beyond the mechanics of an operation to try and instill a passion about story telling. IMC employes [sic] world class journalists who are passionate about their craft and enjoy teaching what they know.
  
  We can craft a training package for new journalists or specialized continuing education courses for existing operations. All of our training involves ongoing student evaluation, so you as an employer get qualitative feedback on your employees, or potential employees.
  
  IMC primary training typically involves Newsgathering, Writing, Assignments, Shooting, Editing and Producing. Technical training for control room operation and master control operations can also be arranged based on workflow.
  
  IMC offers its own training certificates for participants and in some cases may be able to offer continuing education credit."
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