COMM 209: Happy New Year (sorta) for journalists and bloggers (WE'LL COME BACK TO THIS WHEN SPRING SEMESTER BEGINS)!

Thought-provoking post today on Mudflats, a weblog on local Alaska politics that shot to well-earned national prominence when Gov. Sarah Palin shot to national prominence (well earned or otherwise) during last year's election. It's on the future of newspapers and journalism and how blogging fits into the puzzle.

This stuff is important, and we're going to be coming back to it all semester. How can we use the skills we're learning in Communications 209 in technologies that haven't even been invented yet?

It was prompted, according to AKMuckraker as the Mudflats blogger identifies herself, by reports The Anchorage Daily News faces the same problems as newspapers nationwide. And it segued into a comparison of what it's like to get your media content, ahem, on line or on paper, i.e. in what is also known as dead-tree format and may soon become a dead-format format:

I was talking to a friend recently about the fact that the ADN will be drastically cut back, and what might happen if it became an online only publication. She was traumatized. “But….it’s my PAPER!” she lamented. I asked what her morning routine was, and she described making the pot of coffee, letting the dog out, and sitting with her paper in her bathrobe, taking in the news before getting ready for work. Then I told her about my morning routine. Stumble out of bed, into shower, let the dog out, get to work early, make pot of coffee, sit at my computer and peruse the ADN website, and the blogs before work.

She needs paper. I don’t. But that said, I empathize. Because, frankly, if there were no more books, and we all had to get that Amazon Kindle thing, I would be in despair. With books, I want a cover. I want paper. I want to turn pages. I want to write in the margins. I do not want a “wireless reading device.” But newspapers? They hang around the house in stacks, and have to get recycled, and turn your fingers black. And I never was able to perfect the delicate art of folding that gigantic thing over into a readable size without looking like a bumbling idiot. For me, the web version is sleek and clean, and saves me time and effort. It is all about our routine, our comfort, our habit. And nobody likes theirs messed with, no matter what it is.

(Boldface type in the original.)

All this leads her into another segue. (You can segue like mad in a blog, because arguments in hypertext don't have to be linear, probably shouldn't be in fact.) And it's this that I think we ought to be aware of in COMM 209.

Sometimes you hear blogs are taking the place of newspapers, and bloggers are taking the place of journalists. I read the industry press, and I hear it a lot.

But, says AKMuckraker, that's too simple. Too cut-and-dried.

Anyone who has ever perused the blogosphere, even in a cursory way, realizes that blogs run the gamut from rediculous, to horrifying, to funny, to invaluable sources of information. It’s like the internet itself. One amorphous collection of the very best and the very worst of human nature, all available at the click of a mouse. And the blogosphere is the same. Now any person with internet access, be they psychopath, philosopher, or anything in between can say something “aloud”, and with a click of the “Publish” button, anyone else in the world with internet access can read it.

So, it is misleading to think that all “bloggers” are the same. Conservative pundits are fond of saying that bloggers are all pimple-faced teenage kids in their parents’ basement, eating Cheetos and stirring up trouble. I’m sure there are some out there who are exactly that. And in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll confess to you that drafting this post late at night, I am in my pajamas, but am not in my parents basement, and I am eating cashews. So make of that what you will.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Blogs are taking on some of the functions of journalism. I think they serve the same purpose as an old-fashioned printer's shop in the days when Benjamin Franklin could wander into Philadelphia with a roll of bread in his pocket and set himself up as a printer ... they make it easier for "a citizen who is paying attention" (which is how AKMuckraker identifies herself) to have a voice in public ... but it's awfully hard to tell what a revolution is going to look like when you're in the middle of one.

Anyway, here's what AKMuckraker makes of it. She says a journalist has an important job to do, and not just anybody can do it. She quotes an online dictionary that defines journalism as "The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation." She adds:

I don’t know what kind of willpower it would take for me to be a good journalist, but it would have to be superhuman. To “present facts or occurences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation” is a very very valuable thing. It is a skill which I do not possess.

“Journalism” for me would be like someone telling me I could go to a party, as long as I promised not to have any fun. I leave that to those diligent, objective, determined souls for whom this is a calling.

Now I think it's important to realize this is coming from a writer who once compared Governor Palin's sound bites to "moose nuggets" (if you're not sure what a moose nugget is or which end of the moose it comes out of, link here for an explanation and a link to a picture of a wooden moose dispensing nuggets). If we didn't have the Mudflats blog, the world of political commentary would be a poorer place.

But I digress (which you can also do in a blog). AKMuckraker, the Mudflats blogger, says what she does isn't journalism. Instead, she surfs the online dictionary and decides she's a "polemicist," that is, someone who follows the "art or practice of argumentation or controversy." Me, as an old newspaper guy, I'd call her an opinion writer. It's the same thing, just easier to spell on deadline.

Says AKMuckraker,

I have a feeling that there are many other bloggers who can identify with this self-diagnosis. And like the voices of the past that wrote in diaries, or stood on soapboxes on street corners, posted writs in the public square, or who wrote letters to the editor (and continue to do so today), polemecists have a place. The crown jewel of a free democracy is the ability to raise one’s voice, say what one wants to say, and throw those ideas and opinions out into the wide world to encourage discussion and debate. And thanks to the internet, the world gets wider every day. Ain’t it grand.

All that said, I shall, with joy, leave journalism to the journalists, and I shall continue to inhabit my little polemical world, giving all those in the aforementioned profession complete permission to ignore me at will, and go about their important business, or to join the conversation.

As we learn the conventions for journalistic writing -- that is, the direct presentation of facts without much analysis -- we also want to be thinking about how we adapt these conventions to new platforms, to a new world. I don't have any answers. Especially this early in the semester (and it's still three weeks away)! But these are questions you'll be dealing with throughout your career in mass communications.