Week 4: Clash of Traditional and Emerging Values in Digital Journalism

“Social media and speed-driven journalism”

I find it so ironic that social media has pretty much been accepted to be important to integrate into not just journalism but even education, but so few people or institutions have been able to integrate it meaningfully. The thing I appreciate most about having entered the EMAC program is learning how to look at individual mediums and being taught to discover the unique affordances the medium allows to make the most of it. This study reaffirms for me the value of this critical thinking.

The normalization process described in the study shows blatant ignorance of Twitter's affordances, clearly not intentional but still a big problem. I feel like it might be symptomatic of all the news media outlets feeling like they need to jump on the bandwagon of social media, even though there's been little thought to the value of mediums such as Twitter beyond the fact that "everyone" is using it.

I actually had a personal connection to the part of the findings that relates that journalists' Twitter communities are kind of insular because I've become aware of this as a book blogger. Most of the people I follow on Twitter are also book bloggers and vice vera. It's really strange because I've realized as a blogger that my audience is other bloggers. People who read book blogs tend be bloggers themselves. So it's interesting to think how this effect can be a problem for journalists who really should be trying to reach a more general audience, not just their peers. It's also made me wonder about the value of any type of blog whose audience is just other bloggers.

I really appreciated this article because of how explicitly the study was laid out. If I had the time I would like to do my own study like this over a question I've had rolling around in my brain about compensation for book bloggers. Despite my interest, I'm pretty sure I don't want it to be my Capstone project!

“The tricky terrain of virtual reality”

I found it ironic that Robert Kaiser's complaint with virtual reality is that the experience “will often be based on tricks and deceptions by the photographers/cameraman.” I feel like that just as likely to happen with text-based news (and in photojournalism as the NYTimes article we read describes).

During this reading, I also remembered the reading from last week about self-driving cars and how it will be public opinion will decide “the future of V.R. as a legitimate journalistic tool.” I'm not sure it would be as controversial if the 3-D camera footage was just called that: 3-D camera footage. Virtual reality as a term implies some falsity.

Here's a video you might be able to see. On my MacBook Pro, there's compass on the upper left corner of the video that allows me to choose what I'm looking at. 

I think the potential ethical dilemma might lie in how news reporters are trying to use the technology. If they're only trying to do the same old thing they've always done, but now with this new technology, that might be why they could accidentally get into trouble (like the silly mistakes made by the photo editors in the NYTimes article). It also harkens back to the Twitter study and how they may not be thinking about how to use the technology meaningfully in a way only afforded by that technology.

“This is not an interview with Banksy”

I’m familiar with media hoaxing, and although I had heard of the name I did not really know what Banksy was all about until reading this article. I also did not know fake news site were becoming so lucrative. I can appreciate what they’re doing when it’s truly satire, but at the same time it’s just not my type of humor so I don’t follow anything like that.

My favorite thing about media hoaxing has always been how it tricks up news reporters. I love stories about “real” news centers reporting fake news because they haven’t been willing to fact check. That’s the thing I find most hilarious, that the revelation of how desperate the “gatekeepers” are to be the first to report a new story. This article shows how problematic speed-driven journalism can be.

“Ease of altercation creates woes for picture editors”

I had no idea is could be so easy to make careless mistakes or what high stakes were involved for news centers to monitor how the pictures they used were prepared for publication. I’m familiar with the Soviet and North Korean efforts to manipulate images for propaganda purposes, but I had never realized there was also a chance that photo editors could so easily make silly mistakes. This article gives me more appreciation for what photojournalists go through.

“You can now search through more than 400 media ethics codes”

This article is really interesting but not surprising, as it is another example of the speed-driven journalism article findings that even amongst the 11 interview subjects (most from the same state) there is a lot of variation in how news centers want handle their operations.  

It would be great if media outlets could all agree to the same set of standards. I wonder to what degree individual outlets are against the idea. On the other hand, I wonder if implementing a national or universal set of codes could potentially infringe on free speech. I also know that professional journalists have to have credentials to work, from some higher education institution, so I wonder how universities go about deciding who is qualified to join the work force. What if the university and the work place a job applicant desires do not hold the same values?

“Canada’s CBS news shows what thoughtful breaking news coverage really looks like”

I really appreciate how this article about the exceptionally dignified and respectful news coverage of Peter Mansbridge foils what I’ve grown up expecting to see in a live news report and in effect highlighting what could be done infinitely better by major news media outlets. After reading this article, I immediate went to YouTube to try and find a video of this coverage but all I could find amongst the top search results was some guy reiterating what was said in this article.

I think in our hurry to get the news as quickly as it develops, not only is accuracy sacrificed but also human dignity. It’s why people get upset with news reporters when they interview victims of trauma that makes the news in ways that just seem so insensitive, intrusive, and callous. (I think specifically of Matt Lauer.)

When I though back to past experiences thinking about seemingly inappropriate news coverage, my mind immediately went back to some coverage of September 11, not just from the news but also the people on the streets who were able to capture the aftermath with their own cameras. Commentary made in the immediate moment is somewhat shocking. Which is why a little bit of time can be worth sparing for the sake of respectfully reporting a news story.