Journo vs. Blogger: are we STILL having this argument?

Rayne Today

Scott Rosenberg attended O'Reilly's Emerging Techology Conference, coming away with another journalism versus blogging experience; Scott thought we were over this false dichotomy.

Jeepers. I really thought we'd all moved on, too.

On the otherhand, there's still fallout from the Washington Post's so-called ombudsman's initial interactions with the blogosphere. She was shocked, SHOCKED, that the commenting community (and bloggers by extension) could be such unwashed, vulgar ruffians after they took her to task in WaPo's online forum for her failure to retract or correct factual inaccuracies in her work. The rapacity with which the community responded to her inappropriateness both as an ombudsman (allegedly a representative to the media outlet for the people) and as a journalist knocked her socks off and that of WaPo management as well.

But what were they expecting? Neatly written 300-words or less Letters to the Editor? How brick-and-mortar, pre-Web 0.0!! How 1985!!!

(IMHO, the continued lack of a correction is more regressive than brick-and-mortar, let alone the repressive hanky-panky that went on in WaPo's purging of comments...)

Looking at profitability and at situations like the WaPo ombudsman's introduction to forums, traditional journalism and its corporate media host are still grappling with the transition to Web 1.0's business model. Until they navigate this successfully (or abandon it as a transitional step altogether), they won't make it to Web 2.0.

There's a change of mindset required to make that leap, a change of consciousness. Journalism and media need first to grasp the Cluetrain Manifesto -- a market is a conversation -- before they can grasp that the conversation isn't necessarily about setting prices for goods, but instead comprises the goods they are purveying. Declining readership numbers haven't communicated successfully to traditional media that their business model is in its waning days, that they are a dinosaur whose peabrain hasn't registered yet the mortal wound to its chest below. Print media continues to sell to advertisers and offer less content to readers; they've forgotten that there is no media without someone to consume it.

In their tenative explorations of Web 1.0, they build the company towns as Derek Powazek calls their forums, keep them nice and sterile; they don't look like much but an on-line form of Letters to the Editor. Equally annoying is a second approach: they build a place for community, but turn their back on it, leaving only nominal rules in place as the extent of the outlet's involvement. (Read any of the forums at MLive.com's collection of local papers and you'll see what I mean; utter pandemonium, no focused discussion about the articles published, with the extent of media involvement consisting of rules enforcement.)

What traditional journalism and media fail to grasp is modeled by Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo. Josh is a journalist and a blogger; for some time, the two were separate functions. Josh wrote for The Hill and The Washington Monthly, but made observations and comments in his blog that didn't fit in his dayjob as a journo. Although slowly compared to other blogging venues, Josh came to realize that interaction with and between his readers was sorely needed, hence the launch of TPMCafe. And more recently, Josh has begun to feed his readers' hunger for more real reporting, tapping them as a source of research at the same time. There isn't much daylight between the journalist and the blogger in his current model.

The single most important component of this transition was Josh's recognition that readers are not separate but a part of the process -- this is Web 2.0. Readers offer instantaneous feedback either through comments or outlying blog posts that can be used effectively to guide response (including apologies, retractions or corrections as appropriate) or goad for more research. Being more responsive is authentic, another component of Web 2.0; participants want to be fully engaged in something real, not something at arm's length. Although I personally feel that Josh could use more transparency in his process, I also understand this is evolutionary and that the steps he's taken to engage his readers have been big.

Now if only the rest of the corporate, commercial media could leave 1985 and catch up in a hurry...