It doesn’t get much more meta than this. Dan Lyons, real reporter for real old news weekly Newsweek but blogging as the person pretending to be the real CEO of apple, but with a nudge nudge wink wink to all those in the know, today writes a piece that could have been in CJR or some other real media publication looking at the relative merits and demerits of the way two news outlets have covered Zynga. You can read it here. I have no objection to his thrust – that TechCrunch did a significantly better job than the NYT in covering the story. So stipulated. But here is where Dan is missed a key point:
What really cracks me up is how often I still hear people say that bloggers are mere "aggregators" and the "real journalism" gets done at places like the Times.
Um, Dan? TechCrunch is a news organization, and anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t paying attention. Ditto for GigaOm, for Engadget, Gizmodo and so on. Real reporters, doing real news. However you want to define it.
What’s changed is not the journalism, it’s the underlying business model. There will be plenty of journalism in the future. But it will look at the business and staffing level more like TC than NYT.
Glass House 
November 8, 2009 at 6:04 pm |
Um, he was precisely saying that the “new media” is actually doing a better job than the staid old media. Pretty much saying that bloggers are *not* just aggregators now — which is why he cracks up at people who say they are. That’s why he says, immediately after, “Because time after time, blogs are simply beating the shit out of the newspapers. They’re the ones who still dare to go for the throat, while their counterparts at big newspapers just keep reaching for the shrimp cocktail.”
Still have to read more than 140 characters at a time to get good comprehension, though. *wink*
November 8, 2009 at 6:19 pm |
Yes…but the key point is that blogs *are* media, they *are* journalists. Even suggesting that TC is anything other than a news org obscures a key point.
November 8, 2009 at 7:16 pm
“Even suggesting that TC is anything other than a news org obscures a key point.”
Well, I’d argue they’re *more than* a traditional news organization, at least. Historically, haven’t those been mostly one-way entities, quickly retailing facts (or their facsimiles), but moving on immediately to the next big thing? Where accountability happens days or weeks later, in a small box on an inside page in the print version (who knows where, online)? If so, and if Dan is really saying they’re anything other than *that*, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it?
Sorry, I seem to have missed where he says they’re not media at all and the bloggers are not also journalists. But I *have* seen blogger-journalists thrive on the feedback they get, and as a result, wind up doing a better job of coverage, or at a better job of engaging in dialogue with readers. For example, Arrington regularly wades through the replies to his articles, while the NYT doesn’t even seem to *have* an easy way to publicly comment that, ‘oh hey, you missed something big here.’
November 8, 2009 at 7:05 pm |
I totally agree. Just because a news publication uses a blogging platform doesn’t make them “bloggers.” I’m a professional journalist but I use Movable Type to publish for the past five years. I’m often introduced as a “blogger.” I’ve learned you can;t control how people tag you but you can control how you present yourself and to do it consistently. I’m a journalist.
BTW, I was shocked at the NYTimes article. They missed a much bigger story. They should have held it back and taken the story further. After all, if you follow the money it ensnares a large number of large companies, the telcos, social networks, top VCs etc. I hope they are working on that story…
November 9, 2009 at 6:31 pm |
[…] all the viewpoints I’ve seen on the matter, though, one that hasn’t gotten a lot of airplay is a post from Frank X. Shaw, who is analyzing Dan Lyon’s analysis of the debacle. Here is where Dan is missed a key point: […]