With links, why report when you can analyze? Link journalism leads to link editorializing.

With the advent of bloggers, there has been a shift in the ratio of those presenting the news and those analyzing it. Since anyone can publish her opinion on the Web, the balance is tipping towards more news editorials and analyses, and reporting the facts has become the task of the minority.

That’s fine. Not everyone needs to write similar stories on the same event. Subscribers can run wire stories and the rest can link. Then it’s open season for bloggers and journalists to connect the dots and add relative information to give context

It’s almost as if we’ve ushered in the Age of the Columnists. Every journalist who ever dreamed of unleashing her subjectivity should grab a keyboard and opine away.

The point that needs be stressed is that adapting such information mechanisms should be in addition to newswriting, especially since consumers can find links in their purest form elsewhere:

• Readers now can go straight to the source for the “hard facts”, which means lazy journalists’ newswriting can no longer regurgitate the press releases, but neither should they rely on the equally lazy option of simply adding a link.
• News aggregate Web sites are already in existence, and Internet users can subscribe to RSS feeds if a list of links is all they desire, so mainstream media should differentiate themselves by contributing their news expertise.
• Wiki journalism also relies heavily on linking, and like linking, it should be used by the media only to bolster its value as a news source. This is because news is real time, but the wiki concept is, as Daniel Conover puts it, “a curated form of search… a non-news based method of keeping up with developing information.” Conover further writes:

Typical news organizations shun this kind of thinking as “not news. They will soon retire that attitude. Since zapping in and out of topics is the way most informed people acquire information, creating and curating not only databases but high-quality topic articles will be one of the most significant journalism jobs of the future. Again, this will not be instead of news writing, but in addition to newswriting. The best news sources (BBC) already perform this function, often in real time.

Objectivity has not been marginalized. To what, then, would the news analysts link their readers? Journalists are encouraged, rather, not to editorialize in their analyses, but to contextualize. The Internet is already saturated with opinionated blogs and comments, and it is still the news reporter’s job to stick to the facts.

Does Prince Harry think blogs are news? Ask the Drudge Report.

The Drudge Report breaking the news black-out on Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan is a good example of how blogging news sites are easily and quickly slipping into the pit of greed and ambition that mainstream media has been trying to lift itself out of.

When stripped of its ethics, social justice and responsibility, journalism is just gossip. There is no better example of the harm that gossip could cause than the leaking of a Royal’s position on the front lines of a war, to the benefit and amusement of an opportunistic enemy.

For so long, watchdog blogs criticized the traditional media for their seemingly cutthroat tactics in reporting the story. Whether accused of being money-hungry, cowing at political pressure and interests or victimizing the public in trying to break the news first, the media lost the respect and trust of their audience.

Blogs, vaunting themselves as the alternative to the mainstream media, became the forum readers thought would give them the trusted quality news that they longed for, free from market competition and the influence of advertisers and politicians. With that recognition—which bloggers are constantly demanding from traditional journalists— also come responsibilities.

Instead, there is a double standard for blogger news sites. The Drudge Report plays dirty, but the only force that could demand that creator Matt Drudge be held accountable or at least apologize, is the same public that has given him the influence which prompted the Telegraph’s US editor to call Drudge the world’s most powerful journalist.

The Australian celebrity publication New Idea that first reported the Prince Harry scoop on January 7 on its Web site and later in its magazine edition made little waves but was berated by its readers for jeopardizing the lives of Prince Harry and the soldiers who fought along side him. The Telegraph reports that readers called New Idea an embarrassment to Australia, adding the statement of apology issued by the magazine:

Suggesting it had not contacted the Ministry of Defence or Clarence House for confirmation, a spokesman for the magazine said: “New Idea was not issued with a press embargo and was unaware of the existence of one.

“The story was published on Monday January 7. Since then New Idea has received no comment from the British Ministry of Defence.

“We take these matters very seriously and would never knowingly break an embargo. We regret any issues the revelation of this story in America has caused.”

Jon Williams, the BBC’s world news editor, wrote a post for The Editors blog in which he explained the position of those at the BBC who made the decision to agree to the news blackout for Prince Harry’s deployment.

Drudge has been mum on his decision not to heed it, although, unlike New Idea, he was aware of the embargo. His explanation would be appreciated by this blogger, who is sad to see him chipping away at our decency, credibility and trustworthiness.

 

News judgment alone won’t save you

On the information superhighway of the Internet, where news updates and developing stories race by at impossible speeds, how does a stop-press junkie decide which sources to use? What makes one Web site more trustworthy and late-breaking than a rival? How do you know you are getting the news you need and not what would be more relevant in other circles which do consider noteworthy, say, the latest exploits of Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan?

My mission is to find answers to the above. I’ve given myself the assignment and created this blog to track my findings in hopes that such a report might be useful to other news aficionados.

For starters, I hope I arrive at a better and more attractive solution than http://www.newsjunkie.info. If you’re like me, you don’t want “enough news to make you sick”. You want it to satisfy your appetite…with taste.