My hat is off to blogger Jim Carty who has posted a second installment from Richard Deitsch, a Sports Illustrated writer who is currently in Ann Arbor on a fellowship and who attended his second AnnArbor.com community forum.
Deitsch, a skilled and experienced writer with more of a neutral perspective (as opposed to me, or maybe even Jim Carty) has filed an interesting look at last night's program.
Today I was interviewed by a reporter from Crain's about the "citizen journalism" experiment at the Oakland Press and also my thoughts on the new management at AnnArbor.com. While I was on vacation I was interviewed by a reporter for the Ann Arbor Observer, also about AnnArbor.com.
Both these interviews are a result of this blog.
What I told both of them was that any new "news" organization that is going to rely heavily on bloggers will not be a news organization, but an "opinion" organization.
As one who worked newspaper beats for nearly 30 years and who now blogs, I think I know the difference. What I do here is NOT journalism. I freely admit that. I sit at my keyboard and write what I think. There is not pretense that what I am doing here, is what I did there. (I know a couple editors who might disagree).
I have neither the time or desire to make a lot of calls, do research and confront sources anymore. A lifetime of doing that convinced me that anyone who does that kind of work should make a living wage and get good benefits. It is not tough physical work, but it is mentally tough and taxing work when done right.
Like Mr. Deitsch, I remain curious about the staffing of AnnArbor.com. But here is my opinion, AnnArbor.com will be worth what they pay for it. I'm already getting comments from reporters who have had their pay severely cut and they are contemplating not working as hard when the cuts take effect.
If they are going to pay pennies on the dollar to what they pay now, they will not succeed. Good journalists deserve to be paid well. Doing this on the cheap will definitely show, and show right away. A bad first impression will be a killer for AnnArbor.com.
As far as I'm concerned, the inept, high schoolish podcast that remains at AnnArbor.com is already a very bad first impression.
When the Exxon Valdez ran aground, do you think any shipping company, especially Exxon, was willing to put the captain back in charge of any other tanker, or any other ship for that matter.
The answer is no. But in the Newhouse world, you can run aground the Flint Journal and the Ann Arbor News and still get a new and better command while the crew around you is thrown overboard. In other words, at Booth and Advance, the buck stops everywhere, but at the top.
Do yourself a favor and make Jim Carty a pretty regular read.
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2 comments:
While I agree that this particular blog is mostly opinion more than reporting, don't confuse blogging with opinion writing. A blog is just a medium. Bloggers can be journalists just like newspaper reporters can be journalists. Bloggers can be opinion only just like columnists can be opinion only. Some blogs are both. Not sure the folks at AnnArbor.com understand the difference either, but I think it is important that people not characterize "blog" as just opinion.
Sad thing is that the effect of blogs are slowly burning out. There not fashionable anymore. In two years, blogs will be dinosaurs. The only blogs I read are those of mostly former journalists and humorists. That's it. Annarbor.com wants to link in and link out of dozens of blogs not because it necessarily wants to include those voices on its Web site, but because it MUST rely on linking in and linking out to generate any sort of revenue, which still might not be enough to sustain the Web site. That is the ONLY reason annarbor.com wants to link to all these blogs, so it can form a partnership and agreement to share percentages of the ad revenues. I hope more people than I realize the real motives for that strategy. It is why MLive.com links to so many sources that aren't Newhouse owned. It just wants as many page views as possible to drive up traffic for ad revenue. If MLive has 5 million people visiting every six months, Advance could care less if those 5 million are actually reading stories or not. As long as they're clicking on headlines, that's all that matters. Who cares about the quality of the stories? It's free content, as long as people are clicking on to the site even for 5 seconds.
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