PressThink: One Tribe in Press Nation: PressThink Wins an Award

One Tribe in Press Nation: PressThink Wins an Award

"I find it interesting that I got this news from Reporters Without Borders after my last post questioning whether 'citizen of the world' is a valid ID for an American journalist in Iraq. Aren't reporters without borders citizens of the world?..." My acceptance notes.

PressThink, I learned today, won its first ever award: the Reporters Without Borders Freedom Blog Award for sites “defending freedom of expression.” It was an international contest, and Web users (anyone who wanted to vote and had a valid address) were the choosers. PressThink won for “the Americas.” I don’t know how many there were, but thanks to all who voted and to Reporters sans frontières for the nomination (we were one of 60.) Here’s the announcement page and a BBC story.

It’s a serious honor to share that page with Shared Pains, which is a blog from Afghanistan in Persian, with Al Jinane, written in French by a Moroccan, with ICTlex, which is like an Italian Lessig, with netzpolitik.org, or Net Politics in German, and especially with Mojtaba Saminejad of Iran (whose story of imprisonment is told here and here) and Screenshots…by Jeff Ooi (see Dan Gillmor on Ooi’s struggle with the thought police in Malaysia.) For them, international recognition is vital, possibly a matter of life and death. They have hostile regimes to deal with. I have Howard Kurtz. Web voters and Reporters Sans Frontières did a great thing, an important thing by recognizing Mojtaba Saminejad and Jeff Ooi.

I find it interesting that I got this news from Reporters Without Borders after my last post questioning whether “citizen of the world” is a valid ID for an American journalist in Iraq. Aren’t reporters without borders citizens of the world? The questions rise anew: in journalism is there a craft identity not based in the category of nation, and are there universals in a practice like reporting the news?

The press conference, the credential around the neck, the need for quotes, the anonymous source, the official handout that doesn’t have the story but you grab it, the one best camera and mike position, the reporter’s notebook, the deadline, the Q and A with politician, the bland spokesman, the uncooperative official, the dreaded police, the conflict between correspondent in the field and desk at home: these may be universal. More or less.

It is certain that there is solidarity among journalists across countries. That’s what Reporters sans frontières, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and International Freedom of Expression Exchange (but also Editorsweblog) are all about. Threats to a free press are similar everywhere. The knock at the door: the same.

We know that the right to gather and publish the news, and then comment on it, without fear of arrest or harassment, is not universally established. But if it is valid everywhere this creates a universal principle, similar to the better known principles of human rights. Even though there is no world body that can establish the right to operate a free press, the body of people who believe in that right exists worldwide. The state of their union counts for something. In that sense—global solidarity around a principal right of mankind—a trans-national identity is a real and necessary thing in journalism. Not to mention blogging.

I could have mentioned some of this in doubting Bob Franken’s construct, “When I’m reporting, I am a citizen of the world.” Instead, I am saying it now.

But there is another sense in which we need a journalism without borders, also known to the people at Reporters sans frontières, whose awards recognize no firm boundary between the press and the bloggers worldwide. This is a press organization giving awards to bloggers. That’s because bloggers are the press for purposes of extending in political space the freedom to publish news and commentary. In my paper for Harvard’s Berkman Center, Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over, I made note of this:

With blogging, an awkward term, we designate a fairly beautiful thing: the extension to many more people of a First Amendment franchise, the right to publish your thoughts to the world. Wherever blogging spreads the dramas of free expression follow… A blog, you see, is a little First Amendment machine.

I tried to sum it up by adding a coda to A.J. Liebling’s famous remark: “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and blogging means practically anyone can own one.” And I believe that is still the case— in principle. But freedom to have a weblog that speaks freely goes country-by-country as a matter of political fact.

The wonder of it all can be over stated. And if you’re suspicious of the romance in citizen journalism, I really cannot blame you. But let’s not under-state the part that is real: increasingly journalists have to share title to the press, and deal with a new class of producers online. We might put it this way: Professional journalists are one tribe in Press Nation, and there are others.

It seems to me that the RSF Freedom Blog Awards are about that. The awards are a recognition ceremony across groups that see in the atavistic state a common enemy. Alas, only in nation states does press freedom—for bloggers and journalists—become real. We “owe” the nation our understanding of that.

The people of the Pulitzers and the Dupont Awards are one tribe in press nation. PressThink says it takes more than one to make for a truly free press these days. Does that make this a “freedom of expression” blog any more than the next fellow blogging? Probably not. Still, I accept. (With acknowledgments to the other finalists in “the Americas” category: Dan Gillmor and Politech, each a free expression.)

I said professional journalists were one tribe, bloggers are kind of another. It seems one purpose of PressThink is to stay between the two with ideas, questions and proposals. Here’s one for my colleagues and friends in the Media Bloggers Association. Maybe next year we should give out our awards to the Big Journalism people with the most generous and expansive understanding of a free press.

After Matter: Notes, reactions and links…

Jeff Ooi at Screenshots… “I sincerely thank you for your votes of endorsement, not for me, but to uphold the freedom of speech in the little sphere that we have.”

Blogs to the rescue: Tom Watson and others have taken up the cause of the Pakistani anti-rape activist Mukhtaran Bibi, a remarkable and courageous woman detained by the authorities. Read about her in Nick Kristof’s column.

Jeff Jarvis returns from a confab with journalists and academics: “I sometimes hear a defeatism in journalism today — mixed with anger and defiance.”

Our new world of weblogs and citizens’ media is all about possibilities — many of them unrealized, I grant — while the world of the big, old media is increasingly about worry: fretting over declining revenue, resources, audience, quality, trust. That is one good reason for big media to embrace the small, rather than trying to recapture the old: It’s optimistic, energetic, new, open, growing, and fun; it’s the medium in the better mood and that’s catching. In short: Bloggers make better barmates.

Jarvis also notes that the BBC has posted a comprehensive and free course in shooting video. “By teaching those who care to learn, the BBC is building an army of news-gatherers in the world. One of them could be there when the huge story happens. One of them will be inspired to go out and report a story. And that video will end up on the air — on the BBC or on the internet or elsewhere — and we’re all better informed.”

Maureen Dowd made her name with this method of analysis. Baristanet: The High School Model of Media Heirarchy.

There were over 2,000 credentialed media here in Santa Maria covering the trial, and as with high school, there was a definite pecking order. All the cliques were represented: the hotties, smart people, rebels and burnouts. Like high school, everyone was keenly aware of where they stood on the social ladder, and spent most of their time obsessing over it. Here’s a handy guide (which you can clip and use for future celebrity trials):
Network TV Anchors = Football Quarterback / Head Cheerleader
This is the absolute top of the social pyramid. They have huge entourages who form a protective circle at all times. Everyone laughs at their jokes, and they’re never even seen at Cafe Diem (the trial’s equivalent of the cafeteria). Even the police and court staff are impressed with them and let them go places they’re not supposed to go. (Kinda like a geeky science teacher who can’t bring himself to fail that hot cheerleader, because even he is excited that she knows his name). Stone Phillips from Dateline NBC is one of them. He has the thickest hair of any human living or dead.

The rest is sharp and funny. It goes all the way through the tribe down to the bottom. Read.

Steve Outing of Poynter, The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism: “A resource guide to help you figure out how to put this industry trend to work for you and your newsroom.” Outing starts with the simplest and easiest steps (“Opening up to public comment”) and works through to the most advanced, like “Wiki journalism: Where the readers are editors.”

My suggestion for the name of National Review’s new media blog was Right Justified. Doc Searls said he loved it, and said NR founder William F. Buckley would too. Now I learned that Right Justified has made the finals. I’m rooting for it, but I still think they will go with something blander like “Press Gallery.” (Village Voice uses the equally bland “Press Clips.”)

To me this is all vaguely amusing. The bravely ideological lions become lambs when they have to approach the press with a political idea. So they pick safe meaningless centrist newspapery titles— the opposite of their self-image. Press Clips. Press Gallery. Press Conference is author Stephen Spruiell’s fave… okay: how about Press This?

We’re in the ex-ex-cathedra editorial page era at the Los Angeles Times: Wherein the boss of the opinion pages, Michael Kinsley, brings them down from the mountaintop. Things took a new turn this week, as noted by Kevin Roderick at LA Observed. The editorial page dropped all discussion of issues and events (for one day) and each editorial writer told LA Times readers how that writer commutes to work.

Now that’s coming down to the street from the cathedral, almost literally. Thus the ex-ex-cathedra era in Kinsley’s domain. I like Kevin Roderick’s headline: They drive, they ride, etc. Here a post with all his coverage of changes Kinsley and deputy Andrés Martinez have made.

Heather Green, Business Week blogger, and Jeff Jarvis point to this statement from Floyd Abrams, the attorney defending Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper in their refusal to name confidential sources. From the PBS Newshour:

TERENCE SMITH: Well, what about a blogger, Floyd Abrams?
FLOYD ABRAMS: I was asked that today, and I said as I say here, I think a blogger ought to be protected also. It seems to me that the purpose of this privilege is to protect the people who play a function in American life.

It’s not to protect reporters as such. It’s to protect people who gather information and disseminate it on a widespread basis to the public. So I think eventually if there is a privilege, and that’s one of the things the court’s going to deal with, but if there is a privilege here, whether it’s rooted in the First Amendment or what’s called federal common law, I think it should apply to bloggers as well.

His notion that the people who play a function in American life deserve protection is dead on. His description of what that “job” is (gathering & disseminating public information) is neutral between tribes. It’s the people who do the job that journalism is supposed to do, says the First Amendment attorney-of-record for the New York Times. Not the people who have the job title: journalist.

Thus, instead of protecting journalists as a class we protect the right to play the journalist’s part in public life, which “anyone” might need at one time or another. I find that a more attractive legal doctrine. Closer to reality. Wiser politically. And it creates common ground.

Posted by Jay Rosen at June 15, 2005 9:09 PM Print

The People Formerly Known as the Audience: "You don't own the eyeballs. You don't own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don't control production on the new platform, which isn't one-way. There's a new balance of power between you and us." More...

Migration Point for the Press Tribe: "Like reluctant migrants everywhere, the people in the news tribe have to decide what to take with them. When to leave. Where to land. They have to figure out what is essential to their way of life. They have to ask if what they know is portable." More...

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over: "Here is one advantage bloggers have in the struggle for reputation-- for the user's trust. They are closer to the transaction where trust gets built up on the Web. There's a big difference between tapping a built-up asset, like the St. Pete Times 'brand,' and creating it from scratch." More...

"Where's the Business Model for News, People?" "It’s remarkable to me how many accomplished producers of those goods the future production of which is in doubt are still at the stage of asking other people, “How are we going to pay our reporters if you guys don’t want to pay for our news?'" More...

National Explainer: A Job for Journalists on the Demand Side of News This American Life's great mortgage crisis explainer, The Giant Pool of Money, suggests that "information" and "explanation" ought to be reversed in our order of thought. Especially as we contemplate new news systems. More...

The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. "Just so you know, 'the media' has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not 'get behind' candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy… or gal. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.." More...

They're Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial: "I’m just advising Newsroom Joe and Jill: make room for FDL in your own ideas about what’s coming on, news-wise. Don’t let your own formula (blog=opinion) fake you out. A conspiracy of the like minded to find out what happened when the national news media isn’t inclined to tell us might be way more practical than you think." More...

Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class: "We’re at the twilight of the curmudgeon class in newsrooms and J-schools. (Though they can still do a lot of damage.) You know they’re giving up when they no longer bother to inform themselves about what they themselves say is happening." More...

Getting the Politics of the Press Right: Walter Pincus Rips into Newsroom Neutrality "The important thing is to show integrity-- not to be a neuter, politically. And having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well." More...

A Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism "It's mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the 'so-called' from in front? With video!." More...

The Master Narrative in Journalism: "Were 'winning' to somehow be removed or retired as the operating system for news, campaign reporting would immediately become harder to do, not because there would be no news, but rather no common, repeatable instructions for deciding what is a key development in the story, a turning point, a surprise, a trend. Master narratives are thus harder to alter than they are to apprehend. For how do you keep the story running while a switch is made?" More...

He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User "Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who's faking it more? The he said, she said form says they do, but I say decline has set in." More...

Users-Know-More-than-We-Do Journalism: "It's a "put up or shut up" moment for open source methods in public interest reporting. Can we take good ideas like... distributed knowledge, social networks, collaborative editing, the wisdom of crowds, citizen journalism, pro-am reporting... and put them to work to break news?" More...

Introducing NewAssignment.Net: "Enterprise reporting goes pro-am. Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn't, couldn't or didn't." More...

What I Learned from Assignment Zero "Here are my coordinates for the territory we need to be searching. I got them from doing a distributed trend story with Wired.com and thinking through the results." More...

If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn't. So Let's Get a Clue: "Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform operating as a closed system in a one-to-many world." More...

The View From Nowhere: "Occupy the reasonable middle between two markers for 'vocal critic,' and critics look ridiculous charging you with bias. Their symmetrical existence feels like proof of an underlying hysteria. Their mutually incompatible charges seem to cancel each other out. The minute evidence they marshall even shows a touch of fanaticism." More...

Rollback: "This White House doesn't settle for managing the news--what used to be called 'feeding the beast'--because there is a larger aim: to roll back the press as a player within the executive branch, to make it less important in running the White House and governing the country." More...

Retreat from Empiricism: On Ron Suskind's Scoop: ""Realist, a classic term in foreign policy debates, and reality-based, which is not a classic term but more of an instant classic, are different ideas. We shouldn't fuzz them up. The press is capable of doing that because it never came to terms with what Suskind reported in 2004." More...

Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press: "Savviness--that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political--is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain." More...

Journalism Is Itself a Religion: "We're headed, I think, for schism, tumult and divide as the religion of the American press meets the upheavals in global politics and public media that are well underway. Changing around us are the terms on which authority can be established by journalists. The Net is opening things up, shifting the power to publish around. Consumers are becoming producers, readers can be writers." More...

News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation: "Some of the pressure the blogs are putting on journalists shows up, then, in the demand for "news as conversation," more of a back-and-forth, less of a pronouncement. This is an idea with long roots in academic journalism that suddenly (as in this year) jumped the track to become part of the news industry's internal dialogue." More...

Two Washington Posts May Be Better Than One: "They're not equals, but Washington and Arlington have their own spheres. Over the newspaper and reporting beats Len Downie is king. Over the website Jim Brady is sovereign. Over the userï¿½s experience no one has total control. There's tension because there's supposed to be tension." More...

Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die: "An industry that won't move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don't have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise." More...

Grokking Woodward: "Woodward and Bernstein of 1972-74 didn't have such access, and this probably influenced--for the better--their view of what Nixon and his men were capable of. Watergate wasn't broken by reporters who had entree to the inner corridors of power. It was two guys on the Metro Desk." More...

Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate: "This here is a post for practically everyone in the game of seizing on media bias and denouncing it, which is part of our popular culture, and of course a loud part of our politics. And this is especially for the 'we're fair and balanced, you're not' crowd, wherever I may have located you." More...

Bill O'Reilly and the Paranoid Style in News: "O'Reilly feeds off his own resentments--the establishment sneering at Inside Edition--and like Howard Beale, the 'mad prophet of the airwaves,' his resentments are enlarged by the medium into public grievances among a mass of Americans unfairly denied voice." More...

Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Correspondent: "Among foreign correspondents, there is a phrase: 'parachuting in.' That's when a reporter drops into foreign territory during an emergency, without much preparation, staying only as long as the story remains big. The high profile people who might parachute in are called Bigfoots in the jargon of network news. The problem with being a Bigfoot, of course, is that it's hard to walk in other people's shoes." More...

The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow: "The bias charges are getting more serious lately as the stakes rise in Iraq and the election. But there is something lacking in press coverage, and it may be time for wise journalists to assess it. The re-building story has gone missing. And without it, how can we judge the job Bush is doing?." More...

The Abyss of Observation Alone. "There are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional 'role' that transcends other loyalties. I think there is an abyss to observation alone. And I feel it has something to do with why more people don't trust journalists. They don't trust that abyss." More...

"Find Some New Information and Put it Into Your Post." Standards for Pro-Am Journalism at OffTheBus: "Opinion based on information 'everyone' has is less valuable than opinion journalism based on information that you dug up, originated, or pieced together. So it’s not important to us that contributors keep opinion out. What’s important is that they put new information in. More...

Out in the Great Wide Open: Maybe you heard about the implosion of Wide Open, a political blog started by the Cleveland Plain Dealer with four "outside" voices brought in from the ranks of Ohio bloggers: two left, two right. Twelve points you may not have seen elsewhere." More...

Some Bloggers Meet the Bosses From Big Media: "What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entreprenurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never." More...

Notes and Comment on BlogHer 2005 "I think the happiest conference goers at BlogHer were probably the newbies, people who want to start blogging or just did. They got a lot of good information and advice. Some of the best information was actually dispensed in response to the fears provoked by blogging, which shouldnï¿½t be avoided, the sages said, but examined, turned around, defused, and creatively shrunk.." More...

Top Ten List: What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most of today's journalism comes out of the market economy." More...

A Second Top Ten List: What's Conservative About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The quality of any weblog in journalism depends greatly on its fidelity to age old newsroom commandments like check facts, check links, spell things correctly, be accurate, be timely, quote fairly." More...

Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds: "Sure, weblogs are good for making statements, big and small. But they also force re-statement. Yes, they're opinion forming. But they are equally good at unforming opinion, breaking it down, stretching it out." More...

The Weblog: An Extremely Democratic Form in Journalism "It's pirate radio, legalized; it's public access coming closer to life. Inside the borders of Blogistan (a real place with all the problems of a real place) we're closer to a vision of 'producer democracy' than we are to any of the consumerist views that long ago took hold in the mass media, including much of the journalism presented on that platform." More...

No One Owns Journalism: "And Big Media doesn't entirely own the press, because if it did then the First Amendment, which mentions the press, would belong to Big Media. And it doesn't. These things were always true. The weblog doesn't change them. It just opens up an outlet to the sea. Which in turn extends 'the press' to the desk in the bedroom of the suburban mom, where she blogs at night." More...

Brain Food for BloggerCon: Journalism and Weblogging in Their Corrected Fullness "Blogging is one universe. Its standard unit is the post, its strengths are the link and the low costs of entry, which means lots of voices. Jounalism is another universe. Its standard unit is "the story." Its strengths are in reporting, verification and access-- as in getting your calls returned." More...

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists: "Journalists think good information leads to opinion and argument. It's a logical sequence. Bloggers think that good argument and strong opinion cause people to seek information, an equally logical sequence. What do the bloggers bring to this? My short answer to the press is: everything you have removed."More...

Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes "Journalists, you can stop worrying about bloggers 'replacing' the traditional news media. We're grist for their mill, says Satullo, a mill that doesn't run without us. Bloggers consume and extend the shelf life of our reporting, and they scrutinize it at a new level of intensity.."More...

Raze Spin Alley, That Strange Creation of the Press: "Spin Alley, an invention of the American press and politicos, shows that the system we have is in certain ways a partnership between the press and insiders in politics. They come together to mount the ritual. An intelligent nation is entitled to ask if the partners are engaged in public service when they bring to life their invention... Alternative thesis: they are in a pact of mutual convenience that serves no intelligible public good." More...

Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!: "How is it you know you're the press? Because you have a pass that says PRESS, and people open the gate. The locker room doors admit you. The story must be inside that gate; that's why they give us credentials. We get closer. We tell the fans what's going on. And if this was your logic, Bill James tried to bust it. Fellahs, said he to the baseball press, you have to realize that you are the gate." More...

Psst.... The Press is a Player: "The answer, I think, involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for?" More...

Die, Strategy News: "I think it's a bankrupt form. It serves no clear purpose, has no sensible rationale. The journalists who offer us strategy news do not know what public service they are providing, why they are providing it, for whom it is intended, or how we are supposed to use this strange variety of news."More...

He Said, She Said, We Said: "When journalists avoid drawing open conclusions, they are more vulnerable to charges of covert bias, of having a concealed agenda, of not being up front about their perspective, of unfairly building a case (for, against) while pretending only to report 'what happened.'" More...

If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus: "Maybe irony, backstage peaking and "de-mystify the process" only get you so far, and past that point they explain nothing. Puzzling through the convention story, because I'm heading right into it myself, made me to realize that journalism's contempt for ritual was deeply involved here. Ritual is newsless; therefore it must be meaningless. But is that really true?."More...

Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials: "No one knows what a political convention actually is, anymore, or why it takes 15,000 people to report on it. Two successive regimes for making sense of the event have collapsed; a third has not emerged. That's a good starting point for the webloggers credentialed in Boston. No investment in the old regime and its ironizing." More...

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat: "'A presidential election is a like a gigantic moving television show,' he said. It is the extreme opposite of an overlooked event. The show takes place inside a bubble, which is a security perimeter overseen by the Secret Service. If you go outside the bubble for any reason, you become a security risk until you are screened again by hand."More...

What Time is it in Political Journalism? "Adam Gopnik argued ten years ago that the press did not know who it was within politics, or what it stood for. There was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending." More...

Off the Grid Journalism: “The assignment was straightforward enough,” writes Marjie Lundstrom of the Sacramento Bee, “talk to people.” When a writer dissents from it or departs from it, the master narrative is a very real thing. Here are two examples: one from politics, one from music. More...

Questions and Answers About PressThink "The Web is good for many opposite things. For quick hitting information. For clicking across a field. For talk and interaction. It's also a depth finder, a memory device, a library, an editor. Not to use a weblog for extended analysis (because most users won't pick that option) is Web dumb but media smart. What's strange is that I try to write short, snappy things, but they turn into long ones." More...

Jay, mazel tov - i think you win for sticking it out, consistency, and purpose.

I've been on this 24-hour jag pushing for release of Mukhtaran Bibi, the heroic Pakistani woman Nick Kristoff has written about. Well, we've managed to get more that 40 blogs involved so far (amazingly, Jarvis hasn't joined in - despite my invite, and I was hoping he'd lead), but it brings up a point relevent to what you're discussing above.

Not only that paid "real" journalists versus bloggers, but bloggers as an extension - as a operating corps - extending good reporting. To me, this is what happened in the Bibi case, and apparently, in 24 hours, the Pakistani government is listening - I am frankly surprised, happily so.

Here are the links:
http://tomwatson.typepad.com/tom_watson/2005/06/blogs_to_the_re.html
http://tomwatson.typepad.com/tom_watson/2005/06/musharraf_cowar.html

Posted by: Tom Watson at June 15, 2005 9:32 PM | Permalink

Congratulations, Jay.
I was just coming by to let you know I was going to
tell my readers to come read you while I switch my blog to minimal power as I deal with a bunch of education projects due as part of my career change.

I would like sometime to hear your thoughts on this topic/question I blogged about and specifically, why some important stories get the media's attention and
others don't. Is it dumb luck?Too hard to follow-up on stories that don't fit the planned
formula?

Anyway, congrats again.

Drop me an email sometime.

Posted by: Scott Butki at June 15, 2005 10:30 PM | Permalink

Congratulations on the award. You mentioned RSF and CPJ as organisations that defend press freedom.

You can add the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) to that - a network of press freedom
groups that monitors attacks on journalists around the world. The website contains the largest online archive of information about these violations: www.ifex.org

Keep up the good work.

Posted by: geoffrey chan at June 16, 2005 12:17 AM | Permalink

Indeed, congratulations are in order Jay.

You have built a huge tent and hungry readers come here from every corner of the world.

To boot, no one had to vote early and often since the tent includes just about any political streak or hue ;-)

Posted by: Jozef Imrich at June 16, 2005 6:43 AM | Permalink

Jay,
I congratulated you on my blog yesterday. Thick skin has its rewards!

In his in absentia testimony before Conyers' committee hearing on the Downing Street Memo today, Greg Palast situates the US media's allergy to the story in the context of the apparently continuing Newspapers vs. Blog wars. Some of you might want to check it out.

The New York Times wagged its finger about how dubious opposition to authority is in principle while Buzzflash posted the facts democracy needs to function in Bushworld. Who is the defender of press freedom? You be the judge.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at June 16, 2005 9:52 AM | Permalink

Congratulations, Jay. You're a thoughtful, borad-minded liberal (which, of course, is the larval form of a conservative convert, given the right conditions).

Posted by: Trained Auditor at June 16, 2005 11:01 AM | Permalink

For being a champion of blogging as a new form of journalism entitled to protection under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, you deserve the award for sure, Jay.

Let's just hope the right holds up under attack by the political right and its growing number of judicial appointees.

Remember, we have no real copyright protection online yet. My plagiarism lawsuit against Kitty Kelly proved that. And no one seems to be working on it, except me.

But hey, that's life in the blogosphere.

Meanwhile, what's up with the Media Bloggers Association? I sent in the paperwork a couple of months ago and never heard a word back. Oh well, I guess 26 years of experience means nothing to all the Harvard and Yale grads out there, along with all the writers in residence in New York.

Congrats and keep up the good work.

Posted by: fast2write at June 16, 2005 2:33 PM | Permalink

"Enough of the congratulatory warm fuzzies, let's get back to the flaming. I miss the smell of barbecued Lovelady in Navasky sauce."
;-)
Now that's funny.
Good one, Gary. The first PressThink post I've read that made me smile.
One of these days, I'm sure I'll meet, or hear from, the elusive Victor Navasky.
I'm told his new book is a must-read, and it's said he's a lovely guy.
Sooner or later, we have to run in to each other.
I'll let you know when it happens.
Stay tuned.

Steve

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at June 16, 2005 10:28 PM | Permalink

Hey Gary, you don't have to flame Lovelady, he flames himself. Check out Lovelady's contribution today at CJR Daily----it's about Tom Cruise and the Reader's Digest----enquiring minds want to know!

Posted by: kilgore trout at June 17, 2005 12:58 PM | Permalink

From the last comment on the previous post: Thanks to all who participated, even if y'all are 96 percent male.

Not me, dude; I'm 100%.

Congratulations on the award.

Posted by: weldon berger at June 18, 2005 3:46 AM | Permalink

Jay, the RSF award is well deserved. You've earned it. By writing about pressthink, you've humanized a complex organization and made available to readers information they need to be smarter and more understanding of the product.

For that, you've also earned my respect, my thanks, and my vote for this award.

Posted by: Sisyphus at June 18, 2005 11:09 AM | Permalink

I think it would be nice if deleted comments, which insult nobody, include explanations.

I wonder what the developing blog etiquette is for such?

Though of course, banned writers are banned.

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at June 18, 2005 6:47 PM | Permalink

I'm no lawyer. Nor do I play one on TV.

But haven't the courts fairly consistently ruled that the 1st Amendment's focus is on the individual, that is, those acting as journalists - not the job title.

For nearly three decades in the News Dodge, I've worked under the understanding I acted as the eyes and ears of the public who couldn't get into the courtroom or City Hall. I was not so much a 'journalist' as I was a stand-in.

To the degree that there is a certain arrogance and class-awareness among some journalists, it's that they've forgotten that distinction.

That said, Congratulations, Jay. This blog can be infuriating at times. And inspiring. But it's always good conversation.

Posted by: David McLemore at June 18, 2005 6:56 PM | Permalink

"For nearly three decades in the News Dodge, I've worked under the understanding I acted as the eyes and ears of the public who couldn't get into the courtroom or City Hall. I was not so much a 'journalist' as I was a stand-in."
-- Dave McLemore

Exactly, Dave. I was taught that from the beginning (and for me the beginning was 41 years ago).
Any reporter or editor worth his salt understands that he is the reader's surrogate. No more, no less.
That's the point of the whole exercise.
If you're there for any other purpose, you're just in the way. And you might as well turn to another useful occupation -- carpentry, say -- and make a lot more money.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at June 18, 2005 7:53 PM | Permalink

Thank you, all, for your observations as well as the mazel tov's and such.

I know Victor Navasky reasonably well and have for quite some time. I like him and always have. He once told me "public journalism" would take over my life if I didn't watch out. I didn't, and it did. He's an extremely intelligent and sensitive man. Slow to anger. Hard to convince. Learned. Knows a lot about the right, its history since Goldwater and its ideas. Way more than your average mushy-headed centrist newsroom head would. He would, for example, be more open to having a conservative columnist at CJR than most editors because he would think ideology plays a larger role in journalism than journalists sometimes think. (These are my own speculations, not Victor's positions, of course.)

Navasky often says there is an ideology of the right, an ideology of the left, and an ideology of the middle-- which I have found a very useful and reliable observation. Although he is a man highly attuned to ideology and shades of opinion, and definitely, firmly, deeply a man of the left, he is not an ideologue at all. He is used to mediating among factions, not being one.

David M. writes: "I acted as the eyes and ears of the public who couldn't get into the courtroom or City Hall. I was not so much a 'journalist' as I was a stand-in. To the degree that there is a certain arrogance and class-awareness among some journalists, it's that they've forgotten that distinction."

Agreed. I also agree with you that PressThink can be infuriating at times.

But slow things down a little. (That's half of what I think PressThink is about, slowing down the thinking of the press so we can get a clear look at it.) Without disagreeing with your philosophy at all, David, some of the people for whom you were standing in are saying, "thank you for your years of service, and keep at it, by all all means, but I want to do it myself now..." It being journalism.

I think there is a little moment of truth for news professionals at that point. It's easy to breeze past it. Citizens as journalists. Do they really think that's a good idea? Or in the heart of hearts, do they believe theirs is a job professionals have to do for busy clients? That's probably a close call in most newsrooms.

The professional model runs deep. It sinks into self and springs up as "character." People don't change that very easily when they think they have it right. I believe you when you say: I always thought I was a stand-in for them. But the "them" there, the public you were standing in for was at that time theoretical.

Now the questions are cutting closer. The public is closing in. One's beliefs are tested. My radar went way up when I saw how eagerly journalists snapped up the fake-savvy observation that blogs are just opinion, they aren't "news." There was something too eager in this conclusion. The believers in this simple-minded statement wanted to be rid of an anxiety, I felt. What was it?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 18, 2005 11:00 PM | Permalink

So, journalists quickly adopted a 'fake-savvy' observation that blogs aren't news, they're opinion. Eagerly, even.

"The believers in this simple-minded statement wanted to be rid of an anxiety," Jay says. What was it, he asks?

Observation?

I have no doubt there are reporters/editors/etc. shaking in fear at the citizen journalism revolt. And react with smug arrogance. There is too often the sense of dinosaurs watching the meteor approach Earth in some newsrooms.

There are a some blogs, I suppose, that operate on a news model. But by far the most popular across the spectrum -- kos, atrios, powerline, instapundit -- are op/ed sections. With discussion boards that all too quickly devolve into shouting matches.

That may be facile. I don't pretend to be an expert. What are the examples of those blogs that practice breaking news rather than analyzing and talking about it?

Posted by: David McLemore at June 19, 2005 1:48 AM | Permalink

One thing that I think people don't talk about enough is the context that citizen journalists are doing their work in: a media-rich environment, or a media-poor one?

With H2otown, I work in a media-poor environment. We have one weekly newspaper with only one reporter. In much of what I'm doing I'm not competing with or replacing anybody, because nobody's doing it.

Other newsblogs operate in an intensely media-rich environment, like covering Washington politics. Each story in this arena will have dozens of outlets covering it, and now some of the outlets are blogs, sometimes covering things firsthand (think FishbowlDC getting credentialed to go to White House press briefings, or bloggers at the national political conventions). How do the other people in the pool, who work for newspapers or TV feel about the bloggers. As they scan across the row of heads, do they notice them?

Within a media company, who pays attention to blogs, and who is in a position to make any experiments? My suspicion is (and it's nothing more than that, as I have no hope of inside knowledge) that reporters read blogs because they're fun, but that in large part they don't affect how they do or perhaps think about their jobs (unless, perhaps, you are Jody Wilgoren). I suspect they're not allowed to put anything on the paper's (magazine's, TV net's) website, because there's a huge production chain between them filing a story and it coming out the other end as a newspaper or a tv show; and the Web is the last and poorest stop on this train. At larger media companies there's undoubtedly some vice president with a very large powerpoint deck featuring Craigslist and limited in large part to new commercial initiatives like Backfence and NowPublic, and very little knowledge of noncommercial news stuff like WikiNews et. al, and no knowledge of the relative traffic or (more important) active community size of any of them.

And then there's news *filter* blogs (of which there are a great number more) which help the reader by picking out stories from a rich media environment of TV, newspapers, magazines, and, of course, other blogs, and provide commentary and a town square for discussion.

Posted by: Lisa Williams at June 19, 2005 11:40 AM | Permalink

Hey thanks, Lisa. David: Would you call this op ed like? Or this?

In any case, my point was not that blog after blog presents breaking news, thus threatening the daily journalism franchise. Most don't do that. But "op ed" is not a particularly good description, either.

My observation was that journalists were extremely eager--too eager-- to label blogs "op ed" and confine the significance of blogging to that (just opinion, people venting) thus justifying a lack of curiosity or a closed mind. Among the developments missed in this eagerness is the "news filter" function that Lisa pointed to. That isn't "breaking news" or opinion, really. It's just something new.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 19, 2005 6:04 PM | Permalink

To my admittedly limited understanding, Jay, the 'filters'Lisa brought up and such sites as you listed last are the Webs best contribution newswise.

It gets the widest amount of information (as opposed to rumor, bile, innuendo and opinion) to the most people possible. That's a good thing.

My point, to the extent I have one, is that the explosion of blogs has a tendency to redefine opinion as news. That is a worrisome point.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at June 19, 2005 10:40 PM | Permalink

Op-ed is closer to news-in-practice than most reporters are comfy with.

Op-ed explicitly states why the author thinks something is important, some "value".

News often implicitly states this.
Op-ed usually explicitly states the preferred political policy (power, what is to be done?).

The answer to that question of what should be done is not a story of news facts, it's a story of how real world facts interact with values, and perhaps change values -- which may change policy prescriptions.

Many news stories implicitly include a policy -- as part of the "story"; otherwise the facts are really boring.

The censorship of so many Latin America and African news is based, to some extent, on a lack of a preferred policy, to "fix the story" around.

In Rhodesia & S. Africa 20 years ago, it was "end apartheid". Now that Mugabe has been running Zimbabwe into the dirt, where is the coverage? Lots more are dying; his gov't is oppressing the poor blacks to a greater extent -- yet what is the story? What is to be done?

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at June 20, 2005 6:33 AM | Permalink