An issue that I find troubling in regards to the rise of online journalism is how to balance timeliness with fair and balanced, accurate reporting, and I worry that getting the story fast is starting to become more important than covering the story well. As Robert Capps says in his Wired Article "The Good Enough Revolution," "Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect." I think that Capps' point is becoming increasingly valid—hence the rise of Twitter— and also really scary in terms of quality of journalism.
Last summer, I interned at the Boulder Daily Camera. I was there the day that Michael Jackson died. Early in the afternoon reports started coming in from various blogs and other sources that he had died. The editor didn't want to run a story based solely on online gossip, but she wanted to post it as soon as possible, so as to not be behind the curve. She decided to wait until another "reputable" news source posted the story. Once the LA Times published a report we did too, citing their story, which used TMZ, a large celebrity gossip site, as their main source.
So, getting news out to the world fast, why is that a problem?
In Monday's New York Times, there was an article about how newspapers are using freelancers for more stories. That means they can cover more stories with a smaller staff. The article said also means that the paper can't check the facts of their stories as well, and that they sometimes come from biased viewpoints. Unfortunately, because of time and budgetary constraints, many of these stories have slipped through the cracks.
This problem isn't just exclusive to the NY Times. It can happen in all kinds of media outlets, and with the time crunch to get breaking stories published as quickly as possible, it seems like sometimes facts, or having legitimate sources—like in the case of Michael Jackson at the Daily Camera—can be overlooked.
I worry that if timeliness takes precedent over quality reporting than people will begin to distrust the media even more than they already do, and that there will be less of a desire for long-form journalism, because it takes too long. I think both of those would be a huge loss.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Your points are really valid. Online journalism doesn't go through the rigor that print journalism does. The Michael Jackson illustrates this point so well in the fact that the Camera and the LA Times relied on a publication instead of a primary source for a story. The pressure to abandon traditional reporting practices so that these publications didn't "miss" the story was too great to ignore. You put the concern over this so succinctly when you say that if timeliness takes precedent over quality reporting than people will begin to distrust the media even more than they currently do.
ReplyDeleteI think that journalists do feel a rush to push out stories on their Web sites but I don't think long-form stories are in danger of being pushed out too much more than they have been. I think that readers are choosing more niche media for this content and looking towards their local papers for local news/event/features. I think the sources are just more fragmented with the readership becoming more concentrated.
I do believe that the media world is changing drastically. And I also believe that timeliness will continue to edge out traditional, long-hand stories. With instantaneous media (like twitter) available, why would you wait for a story when you could have information right away? A lot of media outlets are citing other sources instead of doing the research themselves. And I've also noticed that scapegoats like 'allegedly' or 'this has not been confirmed' are more common. It makes more sense for the news source to publish the story, even with holes in their research, instead of missing the opportunity to get there first.
ReplyDeleteGood post. You did a wonderful job of balancing your personal voice and experiences against the external application of your topic. Well done.
ReplyDelete