Kevin Marks gives me more credit than I deserve in this Many to Many posting, where he notes the traditional journalistic model of going for an exclusive scoop. He says some journalists are thinking how to make stories more inclusive: "measuring success by how many people they bring into the conversation, and they recognise it doesn't necessarily start with them."
This was with most of the things I used to work on when I was writing a regular column. I was writing about people, issues and organizations after the news had already come out -- trying to put it into perspective with my own take on the topic.
But I also hungered for the scoops. And when I got something all by myself, which happened periodically, I loved the feeling.
This is a valuable part of journalistic competition. It is surviving the shift we're seeing from Big Media dominance to a more synergistic system including the rest of us. Scoops will continue to occur -- though they'll take different forms, and the scoop will last for about five minutes before it spreads widely -- and that's a good thing.
Meanwhile, the involvement of more people in the conversation is the big, and most important, shift of all. This definitely doesn't start with us, or end with us. It continues, and grows.
When I worked in the newsroom I loved the satisfaction of the scoop, too. But one of the things that eventually burned me out on the day-to-day practice of journalism was the number of people who believed the scoop was the thing and not the story.
Posted by: Mark | January 13, 2005 at 11:35 PM
I posted this in the other thread, but let me repost the idea here.
What if I as a grassroots journalist, were to take a picture of something interesting with my cell phone.
How could I profit off this event? I know everyone hates that word profit, but an economic substrate underneath grassroots journalism is very important for it to survive and thrive.
We need a way to encourage people to send traffic back to the original blog which 'scooped' the event.
Posted by: blaze | January 14, 2005 at 04:28 AM
blaze: excellent point.
is anyone working on such a system?
Posted by: Daniel Conover | January 14, 2005 at 07:39 AM
We need a way to encourage people to send traffic back to the original blog which 'scooped' the event.
Slightly related, this is precisely why my RSS feeds only include exerpts anod not the full text of items on Communique, 'scoop' or not. As someone who is struggling to find a way to financially support what I do, the least people can do is provide my site with additions to its traffic stats.
Posted by: The One True b!X | January 14, 2005 at 02:55 PM
Interestingly, on the matter of scoops, yesterday I posted an item resulting from obtaining a City Club of Portland report on our local development agency, one day in advance of its release.
Early this morning, a member of City Club called me "morally stunted" for not saying where I had gotten it.
Posted by: The One True b!X | January 14, 2005 at 03:03 PM
On moral stuntedness (which does not describe the gentleman from Portland) -
This probably isn't the right place to ask but I don't know what is -
what are the journalistic ethics of publishing leaked grand jury information? Is this considered acceptable?
If so - is it because the press has a principled belief that grand juries shouldn't be secret? Or is it just opportunism that's engaged in because "everybody else would do it and nobody can stop us"?
If not - is this written down somewhere, online?
Posted by: Anna | January 14, 2005 at 05:53 PM
I've always thought that scoops were way overvalued. The only people who cared about them were other journalists.
And it lead to rediculous things like several local stations and newspapers have "exclusive" interviews with Gov. Arnold who got across the same talking points each time. And nobody asked him an important question like why he and rich people like him shouldn't pay a bit more in taxes so services to the poor and elderly don't get cut.
I'd rather a news organization do a story better and in more depth and do good follow-ups than have it first.
Posted by: Steve Rhodes | January 18, 2005 at 02:27 AM
We could start by getting over ourselves and just citing our sources, even when they're competing news outlets.
one of journalism's dirty-little-secrets is the practice of adding a tiny little bit of basically irrelevant local information and then putting a byline on what is, really, a wire story. we do this to make our papers look more staff-written than they are, and it's a cheap trick.
Hey, how about a universal declaration in which we say no more shoddy image tricks? that would be nice.
Posted by: Daniel Conover | January 19, 2005 at 10:53 AM