While at Connections, I spoke with a few people about personal journalism, both where I opened the conversation and with a couple of people who approached me. It seems to be a term and definition of interest.
Here’s the opposite of personal journalism: Definitive-voice journalism.
Definitive-voice journalism is the journalism of big media, of packaged-good media. It is the way journalism has been practiced for some time. It is the journalism that the traditionalists defend. It is the journalism that says, “the news is what I say the news is.” I’m not predicting the demise of definitive-voice journalism, but personal journalism will become the dominant journalism within a matter of years.
[…] But for every Yin there is a yang and in his latest post Howard defines the opposite of personal journalism. Definitive-voice journalism. Definitive-voice journalism is the journalism of big media, of packaged-good media. It is the way journalism has been practiced for some time. It is the journalism that the traditionalists defend. It is the journalism that says, “The news is what I say the news is.†[…]
I think of it more as “corporate journalism”–as the voice is controlled not by certain precepts of a profession, but by a machine that has the expectation and need to earn money. It’s the corporate structure that sucked the “local” blood out of many local papers.
Well, there’s something to that from a historical perspecticive. It was publishers who invented “objective journalism” out of a need to placate advertisers. But I think using the word corporate has all kinds of other meanings that are no where near what I’m trying to say.
[…] First, some preliminaries: Regular readers will know that I define blogging as a conversation. Good blogging isn’t just spouting and not responding (i.e., definitive-voice journalism). Yes, the word blog covers both technology and a whole host of self-publishing paradigms that are unrelated to journalism. And every point that Martin makes about blogging not necessarily being parasitic to MSM is also true, but it’s also true that linking to multiple sources and contributing a level of expertise to the conversation is also a form of journalism. Elitists in the profession fail to see this. […]