There are no journalists, there is only the service of journalism.
Yes, I know that in condensed form, that may sound like a parodic tweet. But please consider the idea.
Thanks to the Snowden-Greenwald NSA story, we are headed into another spate of debate about who is and isn’t a journalist. I’ve long said it’s the wrong question now that anyone can perform an act of journalism: a witness sharing news directly with the world; an expert explaining news without need of gatekeepers; a whistleblower opening up documents to sunlight; anyone informing everyone. It’s the wrong question when we reconsider journalism not as the manufacture of content but instead as a service whose goal is an informed public.
Why must we define a journalist? Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan felt compelled to because the newspaper took it upon itself to decide who may wear the cloak, because of debates about Glenn Greenwald as an advocate, and because of questions of law. Her wise and compelling conclusion: “A real journalist is one who understands, at a cellular level, and doesn’t shy away from, the adversarial relationship between government and press – the very tension that America’s founders had in mind with the First Amendment.” Sadly, we don’t often see that definition of journalism played out from TV or the Beltway or especially the overlap of the two.
John McQuaid felt the need to ask why Greenwald is driving other journalists crazy. He concludes that asking who is (and isn’t) a journalist is often “a prelude to delegitimizing their work and what they have to say. It quickly devolves to tribalism.” Read: journalists v. bloggers. Sigh.
God help us, Dick Durbin felt empowered to propose that legislators should decide who is (and isn’t) a journalist, though in truth they already are when it comes to deciding who is protected by shield laws. But I certainly don’t want government licensing (or unlicensing) journalists.
All that discussion in just a few days. All that rehashing a question that has been asked and not answered — or answered all too often and in too many ways — for years. Enough.
Journalism is not content. It is not a noun. It need not be a profession or an industry. It is not the province of a guild. It is not a scarcity to be controlled. It no longer happens in newsrooms. It is no longer confined to narrative form.
So then what the hell is journalism?
It is a service. It is a service whose end, again, is an informed public. For my entrepreneurial journalism students, I give them a broad umbrella of a definition: Journalism helps communities organize their knowledge so they can better organize themselves.
Thus anything that reliably serves the end of an informed community is journalism. Anyone can help do that. The true journalist should want anyone to join the task. That, in the end, is why I wrote Public Parts: because I celebrate the value that rises from publicness, from the ability of anyone to share what he or she knows with everyone and the ethic that says sharing is a generous and social act and transparency should be the default for our institutions.
Is there a role for people to help in that process? Absolutely. I say that organizations can first help enable the flow and collection of information, which can now occur without them, by offering platforms for communities to share what they know. Next, I say that someone is often needed to add value to that process by:
* asking the questions that are not answered in the flow,
* verifying facts,
* debunking rumors,
* adding context, explanation, and background,
* providing functionality that enables sharing,
* organizing efforts to collaborate by communities, witnesses, experts.
So am I just rebuilding the job description of the journalist? I’m coming to see that perhaps we shouldn’t call it that, for it’s clear that the word “journalist” brings a few centuries’ baggage and a fight for who controls it. These functions — and others — need not come from one kind of person or organization.
Well but what about the legal question? Shouldn’t we at least have a definition of journalist so we know who is protected by a shield law? No. For that also defines others who are not protected. Those others are sometimes called whistleblowers and instead of protecting them, our government is at war with them and what they share: information, information about our government, information about us, information that will help us better organize ourselves as a free society.
No, we should be discussing this question — like others today — as a matter of principle: protecting not a person with a job description and a desk and a paycheck but instead protecting the ideals of a transparent government and an informed society as necessary conditions of democracy.
I’m speaking next week before the third World Journalism Education Congress. I was planning to ask them to challenge our industrial age assumptions about the relationships, forms, and business models of news and to reconsider what and how we teach journalism. I was also planning to suggest that if they call their programs “mass communication,” they should change that, since the title itself is an insult to the public we serve. For as Jay Rosen taught me long ago, sociologist Raymond Williams said: “There are in fact no masses; there are only ways to see people as masses.” No more.
Now I’m wondering whether we should discuss the idea that we’re not journalists. Even trying to define a journalist — to fence in the functions and value of the role to a particular job description — is limiting and ultimately defeats the greater purpose of informing society.
So what are we? We are servants of an informed society. We always have been.
Thank you. I am always cynical and this encourages this opinion.
The Snowden case once again highlights the importance of sources in journalism. The real shift (away from traditional media) has been the empowerment of sources. Big media still can be extremely helpful in providing news – as has been shown in the Snowden case – but sources have lower barriers of entry to the public now than before.
Journalists (or “the people who used to perform journalism”) always relied heavily on sources: government, political parties, businesses, witnesses, officials, documents and of course other media. They often suggested that they decided what was news (Gans, 1979), but in fact sources were leading.
Media still have an important role to play. The moment they take up a case it is in the public eye and repeated again and again on all kinds of platforms. They lost their monopoly position but are still powerful players.
As sources have become more important, journalists (sorry, I still use that term) who are clever enough to use these sources are better prepared for the future than those who don’t.
I am also speaking at the WJEC at the end of the week – but probably in a smaller venue. I present some data on new jobs for journalists. Results indicate that journalism has become more technical (making and working on your own media, using social media and advanced search skills etc.), more social (community management, moderation, source-relations, networking), more content-oriented (curation, UGC) and more entrepreneurial.
Who performs these task is of less importance, but people well trained as journalists could do a pretty good job if they’re smart enough.
Jeff:
Bill McKibben addressed the question of “who can be a journalist” neatly at his keynote speech accepting the Estlow award at “Journalism Is Dead; Long Live Journalism,” the most recent Journalism That Matters gathering. Here’s the link:
http://journalismthatmatters.org/newjournalism/mckibben
The scenario you raised is valid but How can I as a member of the public distinguish between good journalism and bad one? Everyone can write and everyone can post anywhere. at least when I read the NY times I know there are serious editors and long tradition of quality. if you don’t allow this to be a guild then where is the screening process?
Reader’s Digest published a joke in the 1950s about a Wall Street guy who visits his mom to brag about his new boat, wearing a new yachting cap and blazer, and said “Hey Mom, now I’m a Captain!” Mom said: “Son, to you you’re a Captain. To me you’re certainly a Captain. But to the Captains are you a Captain?”
Disagree.
There are those who call themselves journalists because they got a degree alluding to that and made it onto the payroll of a big-name newspaper, yet source “stories” about cats doing funny things from Reddit and dogs reacting funnily to eating limes from YouTube. That’s informing society, alright, but it’s not journalism.
Then there are proper journalists who don’t sit and wait for there to be ‘government transparency’ (there never has been and never will be any), but research, dig deep, discover, ask difficult questions, and share what they find with the public, thus informing the public of things they may otherwise never have known but are worthy and important to know about. That’s journalism.
Doing away with the job title ‘journalist’ altogether merely aids the dilution of a vocation already in visible decline. Informing society of what celeb X tweeted about issue Y serves what greater purpose exactly? I’d happily take away the title ‘journalist’ from any paid hack who brings the world that non-news.
But I’d never want to take the name ‘journalist’ from those who discover important issues hidden from plain sight (fraud, corruption, etc), those who ask our government representatives difficult questions, those who challenge popular publicly-held beliefs by relaying valid stories and (opposing) views that go deeper and far beyond than what was already in the public domain (such as a celebrity’s tweets).
I don’t know what you teach your students in ‘entrepreneurial journalism’ but I’d teach them that cute cat stories sourced from Reddit generate traffic easily, so from an entrepreneurial perspective (selling advertising space) they’re a relatively easy route to income – but they don’t constitute journalism, and therefore those publishing won’t be journalists.
Those in pursuit of giving the world quality journalism may not be able monetize their efforts quite so easily (advertisers generally don’t want their cheery adverts next to stories of dying babies; besides, they know that their ads will be viewed by a lot more people if next to a salacious celeb story rather than a well-researched scientific article about a possible cure found for a rare disease) – but they will be proper journalists.
Almost caught myself responding on Medium to your devil’s advocate approach to the age old tradition of truth collection, or as I have always called it journalism.
If I were to write about you, Jeff, I would tackle my content collection with the truths of Who, What, Where, Why and When … and only upon reflection and much consideration would I jut into Wonder territory. Real journalism can only be presented with truth, unlike the opinion you tout as journalism.
We are not the servants on an informed society, a society can only be informed when truth is truth, and opinion in entertainment.
I love your question, and the answer is a litmus test that can be applied to any news source. “Does it sound like someone is trying to sell you something?” When Brian Williams tells America his opinion in a News cast, do you recognize it as his opinion, or the opinion of the advertisers or parent company? Editors and Long Traditions can be purchased at the expense of truth.
You may be able to discern selling or advertising, but can you be sure of competence and checking two confirmed sources and all other journalistic standards before they print a story?
It might also be valuable to consider the motivations of the interests hellbent on creating an “According-to-Hoyle” definition of a journalist.
For the traditional journalistic establishment, their interest is in preserving the crumbling fiefdom they’ve carved out for themselves (on which their exclusive access to sources and ultimate financial viability depends). It even seems that the more stridently they argue about bona fides, the more it reduces their credibility among the general public.
For those in power, having officially-sanctioned “journalists” affords them a greater measure of control over information that is published about them (of particular interest when it is unflattering to them). If they can dismiss a Greenwald or a Scahill because they don’t have Press Corps credentials, it’s a convenience they relish.
Fortunately the people are voting for their own definition with every RT, +1 and share; ad hominem attacks on an individual’s pedigree or tribal affiliation hold no water when the story is accurate and compelling.
There are journalists, those that have mastered the service of journalism, and are performing that service professionally.
You cannot have “consulting” without consultants, “writing” without writers, carpentry without carpenters… etc… therefor you cannot have journalism without journalists.
that’s the point. Witness CNN and the Boston Bombers just a few months back. For that matter, witness CNN and just about any “Live as it’s happening” tragedy when Captain Janks (of Stern show fame) BS’s his way into a live telecast. To your point, they don’t even check ONE source in those instances, much less two. But where is the critical rebuke of CNN as failing to serve its promise?
The government has been good at this: keep your enemies (MSM) closer. Once they’re behind the curtain, they (MSM) themselves will do the enforcing/blacklisting of the ones (citizen journalists, “bloggers”, Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck types) that threaten to disrupt the status quo.
No matter what you think of Greenwald or Gregory, everything Greenwald stands for flies in the face of everything Gregory needs to stay afloat, career-wise.
True, but the journalists themselves have to be motivated to report on the story and sometimes that seems to be what’s lacking.
When the Patriot Act was passed, there was some rumbling about our rights but America was diving for cover from terrorism. Since then it’s been >10 years. These domestic spying programs under Patriot Act were _not_ the best-kept-secrets in the Beltway. There were 3 NSA officials all tried/convicted for being whistleblowers years ago. Supposedly every member of Congress knew the extent of these programs.
So you have tens if not hundreds of Congressional folks (reps and aids, current and retired) knowing “something”. Add to that the countless numbers in the Pentagon, NSA and CIA, and who-knows how many contractors like Snowden over the years as potential sources. Now, how many bona-fide journalists cover some facet of DC, Congress, National Security, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, terrorism, ACLU, SCOTUS, POTUS (and O’s pledge for transparency upon his ’08 election). Total guess but surely in the hundreds, no?
Yet very little was reported or pushed on this story until Snowden created a forcing-function. And for the most part, the MSM reaction has been to downplay the integrity of Snowden and those who brought his story to light. We’re spending more time on whether Snowden is a patriot or Greenwald is a journalist than any of the issues brought to light by his treasonous-or-not info.
The point is that MSM skills and training, while in many cases impeccable on paper fall short if the journalist is won’t actually chase the story or berates those who do.
Line8 Sentence1:”Why must we define a journalist?” After this, I stopped reading.
are you jew jeff jarvis? Repeating words again and again and again to convince us that you’re right or something?
Enjoy the ultimate sexual bliss with sexual content by yourself
[Geniet van de ultieme seksuele gelukzaligheid met seksuele inhoud door uzelf]
http://www.stiekemwel.nl/