The difference between journalists and bloggers …..

… according to Clyde Bentley, who’s guest-blogging at Mark Fraser’s MediaShift is .. Comments.

Here’s the quiz of the day for 21st Century Journalism 101: What makes news critics howl, able reporters swoon and strong editors weep? (Hint: The great unwashed and untutored of the blogosphere consider them pure manna.) If I could squeeze another cliche into that first paragraph, I would. As long as it helped generate the answer to the quiz:

“Comments.” …..

…. When we first introduced staff blogs to the traditional journalism world, it seemed a refreshing opportunity to give more of us a try at column writing. But when the IT people toggled the “allow comments” option, all hell broke loose. Many of us grew up in a business where the end of the story was the end of the story. Period. The inarticulate sniping of a few know-it-alls adds nothing to the day’s report. Besides, they were embarrassing. So if we couldn’t block comments altogether, we put up walls of rules to diminish them.

And this:

Bloggers feel no obligation to be 100% correct. But they have supreme confidence in the validity of their posts. If they are wrong, no big deal! There will be a dozen comments to either set the record straight or at least keep the pot boiling.

But journalists are steeped in a culture of insecurity. We send our stories through a gauntlet of copy editors. We fact-check the quotes. And we buffer every statement we can with “allegedly” and “according to…” Is it any wonder that we fear comments? Errors are sins. Comments point out errors and therefore damn us to media hell. In theory, we journalists thrive in the public sphere. In reality, we find it a very scary place.

Read the full article – Losing the Journalistic Security Blanket.

Much has been said about the difference between journalists and bloggers. Original stories versus recycling. Editorial safeguards versus free-flowing conversation. Sovereign versus distributed. Slow-on-their-feet versus nimbleness. Big media versus real voices. Fixed number of words versus write as much as you wish. Job versus passion. We write for a brand versus we are the brand. Good writing versus poor writing …… I had blogged my view on the distinction, in 2005:

Yet, there is a distinction in my mind – blog media is about rub points and conversations, it is about writing out loud and learning, it is about reporting in real voices in real time. Blog media can be individual or group perspectives, most tend to be independent voices, the only community that is formed is in the links, whereas MSM is about reporting on facts or interviews within the context of a newspaper or station or media empire.

So are bloggers the fifth brigade? How can we co-exist with journalists, feeding off each other, with trust and respect? Is there scope to collaborate and not compete? Bloggers, by the diverse places from where they come, can report many more things in real time than MSM reporters can hope to reach – again, the tsunamis blog and wiki experiences exemplified this – how can this value be embraced as a strength?

The either-or debate however has been flogged to death, and is the wrong way to approach this. Not all blogs tell the ‘truth’ – but do newspapers and television anymore in their corporate avatars? The rise of blogs is not necessarily the death of journalism as we knew it. Does this mean that journalists must write in ‘beta’? No – still they must understand how the very nature of journalism is morphing to adapt to what readers and viewers want – whether it’s in the delivery system (RSS) or nimbleness and speed in reporting, or the desire for more humanized reporting in real-voices. It’s not the bloggers or the YouTube generation that are changing the face of journalism, it’s the people who consume media and their needs that’s driving this change. They don’t wish to be told “this is the end of the story” anymore – they want to form their own conclusions. They don’t want to be told “this is the truth” – they’d rather discover it. As a result, the rules of free speech, integrity, authority, responsibility, trust and transparency are being re-written.

This is why this article resonates – comments make a simple difference – they are from readers, they lead to conversations, which in turn feed the reader, the commenter, the public and the blogger. To dismiss them as noise, or fear them would be self-defeating for both the journalist and the blogger.

Tagged as: bloggers, citizen journalism, clyde bentley, comments, journalism, mediashift, Participatory Media