Three Way News

Your Source. For everything. Really.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

What Bloggers Do Do

From Slate via D:

What Can Bloggers Do That Reporters Can't? -- Jack Shafer:

Writer for writer, mainstream journalists possess more talent than bloggers, and talent matters when you're competing for an audience. It's no accident the several of the best bloggers, Mickey Kaus, Andrew Sullivan, James Wolcott, and Joshua Marshall, honed their interpretive, narrative, and reportorial skills in mainstream media. It sounds flip, but one thing mainstream journalists could teach bloggers is that there is more to the craft of writing than typing "Atrios nails it!" and linking to Eschaton. ...

What can bloggers do that professional journalists can't? Because bloggers answer to no one, they need not worry if their dispatches cause the chairman of the board of General Motors to stop talking to the publisher—or placing ads. Their independence gives them a subversive strength, one that undermines the cozy relationship the press has with its corporate cousins and government. The unmediated nature of blogs, which frightens so many professional journalists, is really a plus. With so many bloggers writing outside the bounds of authority, they've become impossible to silence or censor, and their provocations help keep the national debate going at full tilt. Too bad constructive recklessness can't be taught.

The whole article is an interesting read. I've got a journalism degree, even if that never was a serious vocational aspiration. The first thing I learned in journalism school was to forgo any attempt at artful rendering of the story. Perhaps that's j-school bias: an over-indulgence in doctrine from pedants who couldn't hack the real job. In at least once case -- my actual Reporting 101 professor -- that's certainly true. But, read the first paragraph of 100 news articles and you'll find an overwhelming lack of artful intent. You'll see plenty of well-crafted ledes, but very little delightful prose.

That's probably the way it ought to be, even if it isn't the way it has to be. Although the vast majority of blogs are as poorly written as this one, the best writers in the blogosphere (although no writer of the first rank in print or in blogs would ever take the blame for that ignominious metaphor) surpass print journalists with ease.

Blogs are written with passion, which is at the core of great art. Blogs are written with humor, which is at the core of accessible art. Blogs are full of bad art, yet art it is.

And, here is where Atrios nails it.

Three Way News

Your Source. For everything. Really.

Contributors

Current Poll

Best comic strip?

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Recurring features

Hammer's Favorites

Jambo's Favories

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

What Bloggers Do Do

0 Comments:

Blogroll

Special Feeds

Fun with Google

Search Tools

Prior posts

Archives