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.

Survey says: more people get their news online, especially journalists

  If almost all journalists go online daily to find news and nearly half of the rest of us do the same, then media professionals should again find themselves with news expertise to offer readers.

• Many sources such as news wires and press releases, which were once exclusively available to journalists, are now open directly to citizens. However, while journalists collect and process this information for a living, other professionals don’t have all day to wade through everything.  
• Here may be where the ideas of link journalism and networked link journalism would come into play. As they do their research and investigating, reporters could then compile their reference and source links for readers who would otherwise spend hours clicking around on search engines to find the complete story.
• With such disclosure, journalists could regain the trust of their “audience”, not only letting the sources speak for themselves, but being helpful at the same time.
• The recent We Media/Zogby Interactive survey reminded the newspaper industry that it is not only facing a crisis in declining circulation and advertisement revenue, but also in declining credibility and quality.
• Now that readers can check the facts for themselves by following links in the news they read on the Internet, it is no wonder the poll found that online news has a greater share of the people’s trust, as stated in the 27 February 2008 press release on the Zogby Web site:

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).

  Another important reminder that the survey gives the media is that traditional journalism has lost touch with its local reader.

  As more people gain access to international and national news on the Internet, they rely less on their local newspaper or TV station to learn what’s going on “out there”. The study affirms that citizens feel they’re lacking community news about what’s going on “right here.”

  No longer does every paper in the U.S. need a Washington bureau and a Middle East correspondent. Local papers can now redouble their focus and resources on local news and give the people what they really want. Of course, they will want to provide this news on their Web sites.

Other findings from the survey include:

• Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64%), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35% in this survey from 27% who said the same in 2007.
• Both traditional and new media are viewed as important for the future of journalism – 87% believe professional journalism has a vital role to play in journalism’s future, although citizen journalism (77%) and blogging (59%) are also seen as significant by most Americans.
• Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).
• Three in four (75%) believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
• 69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition, while 17% believe they are the right size to adequately compete.