Newspaper Writers Won’t Be Happy With This
January 31, 2007
The San Francisco Chronicle has a new feature on its website where podcasts of calls from readers are posted. The title of the feature is called “Correct Me If I’m Wrong.”
I’m pretty sure the last thing newspaper journalists want to hear is a dozen phone calls a day from readers who will claim “That’s not how it happened” or “you’re being bias” etc.
This shows a blatant change in the journalism world, where communication between writers and readers is becoming more prominent and even a necessary part of good journalism. Readers can now react to any story they read beyond just leaving a comment on a message board following an article. There is now an entire page on the web where their actual voices will be posted with their thoughts and feelings to the rest of the websites readers. This means that basically anyone with an opinion can be a broadcasted journalist.
This trend is quite threatening for people such as myself who wish to become writers. As great as involving the reader in the stories is, you don’t want it to get to the point where the readers are reporting the stories and making the corrections themselves. Isn’t that the editors job in the first place? Citizen journalsim is now more existent than ever thanks to the web, and now with newspapers giving in there’s no telling how far it will go in ten years down the road.
Better start studying finance for the future, just in case.
February 2, 2007 at 7:38 pm
You sound like my other friends in print. I think the attitude that reporters shouldn’t interact with the public they write for is a MAJOR reason why people have turned away from traditional media and now want to create their own content. I’ve always found this arrogance fascinating and sad. Who is the “decider” of who should be considered as a journalist and who does not. And, why wouldn’t you as a journalist not want to know the truth about how things happened or maybe you do have a bias. Are you going to be a journalist that just covers events and not talk to people about the issues you cover? What happens if the person you don’t want to talk to happens to know something about the story you covered? Will you come across some crazy folks during your career? Of course, but please, don’t fall into a false sense of entitlement and arrogance because someone pays you a buck so you can be called a “professional” journalist.