gatewatching

Amongst the standard-issue ammunition in the journalism industry’s defensive skirmishes against those pesky citizen journalists and news bloggers is the deceptively simple claim that there’s a clear difference between reporting the news, i.e. breaking stories (which is what professional journalists do) and commenting on the news, i.e. “endless talk” (which is what everyone else does).

It’s a line repeated in the latest missive from Christian Kerr in The Australian - a rabid, self-serving rant against all those online commentators from Possum’s Pollytics to Larvatus Prodeo whom he doesn’t like, curiously claiming in its title that “our blogs [are] too analytical”, as if intelligent analysis is somehow a bad thing. Still, if nothing else, it’s got one thing going for it: if ‘real’ journalists are the ones that break stories, then Kerr himself isn’t a journalist.

One problem with that neat definition, though, is that breaking stories isn’t a particularly common trait of mainstream newsroom practice these days: much of the content of our daily newspapers and broadcast bulletins comes from a diminishing number of global wire services, and is simply processed by journalists to fit the local context. Similar to citizen journalists’ common practice of gatewatching - following the news passing through the gates of mainstream news publications, and then commenting on it - this is a kind of industrial gatewatching, where agency feeds are constantly monitored for new items to be inserted into the locally-produced publication. So, news bloggers and citizen journalists don’t tend to break stories - but neither, for the most part, do professional journalists.

Read more…

blogging analysis, Christian Kerr, citizen journalism, commentary, Die Zeit, journalism, news blogging, paid content, The Australian

UPDATE: Lyn Calcutt over on Public Opinion takes up this theme, is much harder on CK than us, but makes some fair points along the way.

UPDATE 2: One of those points being, of course, that it was a blogger who broke the story in the first place.

UPDATE 3: Tree of Knowledge is onto this one, too.

I’ve always enjoyed Christian Kerr’s writing. I miss his contrarian presence at Crikey, but his move to the Australian can only improve the political coverage there.

Today, though, he’s revealed that he’s pretty well “on-message” when it comes to the Oz’s attitude to Ozblogistan. The evidence turns up in a piece this morning on the “blogs of war” crisis now enveloping the Victorian Liberals. As a whole, his article is pretty scathing about the Libs’ party organisation, not just in Victoria, but nationally.

At the end of the Howard era, he opines, the Libs’ are too reliant on immature “child soldiers” like the sacked staffers in Victoria - inexperienced, accustomed to cruisey Party or Parliamentary-staffer jobs, and without the experience that those “Labor union hacks” they revile have of interacting with ordinary people.

The killer comes, though, when he criticises their decision to go public with their criticisms on a blog:

They think that online smears are clever. Real political professionals know that the Australian blog world is insular, often ignorant and has virtually no influence on mainstream debate.

Ouch! Mind you, I’ve heard very similar opinions from other seasoned political pros. The funny thing is that the conferences I’ve attended lately - organised for academics and journos - have been consumed by the idea that bloggers present a direct threat to the ongoing viability of newspapers and other MSM outlets.

So where does the truth lie? Any thoughts?

blogging Blog-gate, blogging, Christian Kerr, The Australian