Red III
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean,
*
I attended last night's panel, Weblogs:
Challenging Mass Media and Society at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. It was interesting and a good panel. A least seventy-five people were in the audience. Nice room. It was videotaped.
I'm sure the ideas were new to many people, but I got about what I expected. I didn't learn anything new. But I'm glad I went. It was, in a way, an historic occasion.
One of the panelists asked who would be blogging about this. Maybe ten people raised their hands. My assumption is that if you were there and you blog then you're going to blog about the panel. So that means sixty-five other people don't blog. And so here comes my often and firmly repeated contention: if you haven't blogged, over time, repeatedly, and interacted with other bloggers, then you don't know what a weblog is.
So it was interesting to me that the panel began with no definition of or introduction to weblogs. And you could tell later by the questions who knew, intimately, as a user, what a weblog is and who had no experience and so, basically, didn't really know what they are and how they work. In fact, a woman two seats away from me prefaced her question with, "I've never used a weblog, and I'm not really sure I've really seen one..." and then went on to try and talk or ask about how and if and why weblogs and their practioners could be a form of journalism.
So I'm guessing for much of the audience the essence of the discussion about whether or not weblogs are a form a journalism was a big donut. Round with a big hole in the middle, and not particulary good for your digestion. (Two days later, on 092002: let me qualify this by saying that for me it was a donut, and I'd guess, but don't know, that others feel the same, though I didn't talk with anyone about it and I haven't seen any posts that express this, so maybe in the end it's just little ol' me that feels this way.)
It wasn't until a few minutes in that Rebecca Blood defined weblogs: regularly updated, reverse chronological order. Later the idea of permalinks was mentioned, but that is losing its defining significance since permalinks are becoming more standard. Still, I suppose if there aren't permalinks then it's not a weblog.
The panel was well-spoken and had good things to say. I have about three pages of notes that, if I were a good reporter, a good journalist, doing my research to report, I would consult in order to make this a better story. But I'm in a hurry and don't have the energy and so that, for today anyway, confirms that my weblog is not journalism. At least not today.
But let's say that tomorrow I consult my notes and write this more from a non-biased, reporter's point of view- then maybe I could begin to be a journalist? This idea of who is and who isn't, what standards are applied, and what is the editing and production process was the heart of the panel.
Dan Gillmor had a very generous definition for journalism, arguing that anyone who is writing about a topic, has done their research, and can write with authority, really reporting, is in fact a journalist, no matter how narrow or specialized their focus. Lots of people are doing that. He mentioned Dave Winer, and how he has, uses, and verifies his sources, and is an expert in, for example, RSS; this qualifies Dave to be a journalist.
Dan Gillmor has posted about the panel. Jay Cross was there but doesn't appear to have blogged it yet. A few others had laptops but I don't know who they are and where they might have posted. So this is the other side of journalism. If it's published, how do I know it's out there?
Say...
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