Reconstruction of American Journalism

Things I didn't understand

Advocacy Journalism 
It's not so much that I don't understand what this is. In fact, it's my favorite kind of journalism because it doesn't even try to claim to be unbiased. Let's be honest here - I'm opinionated. And I can write without my opinion most of the time, but sometimes it slips through. Anyway, I suppose I just don't understand whether the author thinks advocacy journalism is posing a threat to traditional unbiased journalism and if that's necessarily a bad thing.


The whole Attributor/Fair Syndication Consortium 
I think that maybe I could understand this if I weren't so tired and I read slowly, but I've looked over it a couple of times, and I really just don't understand what's going on with the whole thing.


How could a newspaper be a nonprofit?
The article says something about newspapers being an educational nonprofit, but I think that's a bit of a stretch. With education, people gain knowledge. With news articles, people generally gain information. After pondering over it for a while, I decided to see what I could find on the Internet about knowledge vs. information, and this definition from the Knowledge Research Institute, Inc. is the best one I found:
"Knowledge consists of facts, truths, and beliefs, perspectives and concepts, judgments and expectations, methodologies and know-how.

Knowledge is accumulated and integrated and held over time to handle specific situations and challenges.

Information consists of facts and data organized to describe a particular situation or condition.

We use knowledge to determine what a specific situation means. Knowledge is applied to interpret information about the situation and to decide how to handle it."
Apparently there is a difference. And I just don't think newspapers can pass as education.

Can loyalty keep a paper afloat? 
The writer of the article seems to think that if newspapers succeed at getting nonprofit status, they will be kept in business by loyal donors. I'm aware that people donate to all sorts of things, but I just have doubts that enough people will be loyal donors to newspapers.

What are the advantages of pro-am reporting?
First off, I just don't understand how this method will help newspapers. Secondly, I only see it hurting professional reporters. If we allow amateurs to take over the journalism world, where will our jobs be? I don't care if that's selfish. I'm in the journalism school because that's what I want to do with my life, and if someone else wants to be a reporter, that person should be in the journalism school too.

How do news organizations make government information more easily accessible? 
This one is pretty self-explanatory. I just can't even grasp how much work that would be for us, and I haven't decided if that's even our job. As watchdogs, perhaps it is. Or perhaps we should make our government do it somehow. 


Things that were left out 

Do reporters sometimes make situations more dramatic?
There was a lot in the article about how reporters are necessary because they expose so much information. But I just have to wonder how much we expose that we shouldn't. This is more of a personal problem I have with journalism rather than something in the article. I'll get back to that in a moment, but I want to discuss this problem. I agree that the government should share information freely, and when they won't, I think we, as journalists, should find it anyway. But sometimes I feel like we intrude on people's personal lives. Forget privacy laws. They let us do a lot more than I think is necessary. Back to the article now ...

Besides experience, what exactly can reporters offer the general public that a Facebook news feed and Twitter cannot?
Honestly, I get a lot of my news from Facebook and Twitter. As a journalist, I'm reluctant to admit this fact. But the thing is, I have a lot of friends who post articles and videos that are interesting to me. I don't have to sift through pages of stories to find what I want to read. I have most of it right in my news feed. The article said that although journalism has become more of a community thing, reporters still offer the necessary experience. After thinking about it, I think the best thing reporters offer that Facebook and Twitter cannot is reliability. Once one of my friends posted an article about zombies. It legitimately said they had found real zombies, and it looked like it was from a legitimate news site. Obviously it wasn't reliable. The one good thing I can think of offering the general public is reliability. Most journalists take time to check sources and facts so that we don't publish trash and lies.



How can newspapers get as much revenue online as they do in print?
Maybe this question should be up in the "Things I didn't understand" section. I don't have a lot to discuss about it. I just wish the article had explored more options because I left it still feeling like online news will never find the revenue that it does in the print world.

How would micropayments work? A lot of people only read PART of a news story.
To me, this idea was just stupid. For example, when I was at work this summer, I read the headlines on CNN. When I saw something that piqued my interest, I clicked on it. And then my boss would walk up and tell me to go interview someone. (Normally he gave me more specific instructions than that.) So I would read the first paragraph to pass the time, and once I got the idea of the article, I moved on to something else. I think a lot of people get their news this way. If you try and force someone to make micropayments on every article, I just don't see it working. I wouldn't do it.


If students collaborate with news reporting, what will that mean for current reporters? Jobs are already scarce. 
I'm concerned about this problem because I'm graduating early - in December. And while I think it's great for students to get experience, I don't want students taking jobs I'm applying for just because they'll work for free. My point is that I don't really see this idea solving problems. I like what our class is doing; I feel like we're solving problems without taking people's jobs. But it seemed like the article was suggesting that students should actually report, etc. with local news, and it just seems like that's taking jobs away from other people. If the article is talking about internships, obviously that's different - students have to apply for internships so there is still some competition, and they can also get the experience they need that way.

I'm aware that not all of this blog is completely on-topic. It's the best I can do right now. I thought a lot of the smaller issues in the article (which I commented on above) were more questionable than the larger issues. That's why I focused on them.