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March 28, 2006
Back from the north...
It's spring in Springfield, so in that sense I'm glad to be back from my visit with Doug McGill, in Rochester, Minnesota. We had a great time jawboning about the state of journalism and putting together our proposal for a colloquium on the topic "Who is a journalist?" I think we have a strong proposal. Now the waiting game begins.
Boiled way down, here's what we decided: Commercial news organizations do not get to decide who counts as a journalist; audiences get to decide who counts. So would-be journalists must create legitimacy among the publics they would serve. And we suggest three ways that may be done outside of a traditional newsroom: 1) be loyal to the audience first, 2) make the invisible visible (i.e. cover those people and topics the so-called mainstream media ignore), and 3) operate with a discipline of verification and as a custodian of facts. Do these things and you may properly call yourself a journalist.
(Alert Rhetorica readers my be snorting: "But you used to claim that journalism required an editorial process! What gives?" Well, this: I'm apparently changing my mind about that. More anon.)
Posted by acline at March 28, 2006 9:22 AM | | Spotlight