Review on James Rainey's "'Citizen journalist' broke Obama story" (LA Times, 4/15/08)

The Huffington Post, and other websites alike, are a great outlet for bloggers and citizen journalists with big stories to get noticed. Mayhill Fowler did exactly that. While her ethics are shaky, she found a great story and did what she thought she had to do as a journalist.

Since The Huffington Post is one of the most visited websites, Fowler's story got picked up, and support for President Obama went down (to some extent). However, Fowler didn't gain that much support either. She was challenged as a real journalist, and her ethics in reporting were put into question. Was it ok that she went to Obama's event that was deemed "closed" to mainstream journalists, but then wrote about it as a "citizen journalist?" Maybe if she had posted it to her own blog, and then it was picked up, but even I am questioning if what she did is right or wrong.

Either way, Fowler uncovered an important story that mainstream journalists would not have otherwise covered. And maybe that's why her ethics don't matter, because she technically was not employed as a journalist, anyway.

Review on Josh Marshall's talk "The Growth of Talking Points Memo" (Sept. 2008)

Talking Points Memo was something quite successful to come out of the Florida recount situation in 2000. Josh Marshall's discussion about how TPM started brought up three good points.

The first point being that TPM relied heavily on the community in order to be successful. People donated money, which was obviously helpful, but more importantly, people contributed their own research to help TPM in what Marshall described as "collaborative journalism."

Second, Marshall pointed out that TPM raised $100,000 from fundraising, but not in large chunks of donations. These donations were small; $50 were maybe the largest amounts people were donating. This only goes to show that TPM received many donations in order to hire new, young journalists. In the age of pay walls on websites like The New York Times or Newsday, less and less people want to pay for news, but rather for the hiring of new journalists to report it. People want free news, but they don't believe in it enough.

Lastly, Marshall says, "The point at which we succeed, we also lose the story," meaning that when the independent journalists have gotten the mainstream media outlets to notice and the story gets too big, it's not their story anymore. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just means it's harder for Marshall's two investigative reporters "to make much headway."

Review: "Breaking Through The Information Blockade" by Gene Hyde

Espresso and journalism. Sounds like a great (and pretty typical) combination to me. I can only imagine what it was like in 1999 to be a journalist, let alone a journalist with less than amazing Internet. The creation of the Independent Media Center, an online alternative to corporate media was how journalists before the millennium started "to break through the corporate information blockade that results from corporate control of news reporting." The rapid growth of these IMC's shows just how much media backlash there was (and still is). Now more than ever, reporting is highly corporatized and much journalism is profit-driven. It's good to hear that Indymedia "will continue to research their stories, cover issues aggressively, and take time to report on issues shunned by the mainstream press;" good journalism is not dead yet. 

Robert McChesney- Corporate Dominance of Media and the Internet (Q&A Session)

Robert McChesney (left)  answers questions as Jeff Cohen (right) moderates the Q&A session. 

Last night, the Park Center for Independent Media brought Robert McChesney to campus for a talk about "Corporate Dominance of Media and the Internet." Aligning quite well with our class discussions in Independent Media, the auditorium was full of Independent Media students, anxious to pick McChesney's brain.

I'll talk about one of the questions in particular, as it is something that I have recently been fascinated by.

Some context: when I knew I wanted to pursue journalism, I obviously started paying attention to the media more closely, following as many stories as I could. My family grew up watching our local FOX affiliate, but once I got to college, I learned that FOX was bad, or at least didn't align with my views. CNN was my favorite, but I think it might have just happened because it was always on in Park, the dining halls and anywhere else IC has a television. I wanted to do broadcast journalism, and I was so sure I wanted to have my own show on CNN, or do something with them.

After watching for so many years, and being exposed to so much more new media, I'm not so sure. Getting back to last night, I'm not sure of what the question was, but it was something on the lines of what McChesney thought about mainstream media like CNN, MSNBC and FOX.

"They don't do journalism; they're just talking heads," said McChesney, "you're just going to watch the person you agree with."

And then it hit me. For so long, CNN is 'who I agreed with,' but after observing them, they're just who I've had the most access to! Is there ever original reporting at places like CNN anymore?

McChesney said that corporations are getting out of journalism, and getting our of paying reporters to cover things. He talked about how conversely, there are about four PR people for every journalist, and about 80-90% of the media reported has been spun. There is no original journalism.

I don't want to be a talking head, and I don't want to report something (or not report something) because it makes my company money. Corporations shouldn't control journalism, but journalism also shouldn't control corporations.