Freedom of Content - Essay

Freedom of Content: Why Blogging and Traditional Journalism Need to Coexist in Today’s Journalistic Environment

With their dwindling reserve of longtime customers and failure to draw a large market of young newcomers to their stands, print news mediums are entering a long, downward slide as websites and bloggers pick up the slack, providing split second responses to breaking news stories. Nonetheless, the panic over the slow death of print media has risen to unjustified levels of panic among people who frequent both print and online. Although print media no longer owns the market, traditional media, with its deep pockets and credibility, remains largely unharmed by the decline in news sales regardless of public opinion. Blogs and traditional media sources provide occasionally similar news to different audiences through different mediums and their unique uses make neither more influential than the other.

An Introduction to the Subject

The concept of blogging as an exchange of information comparable to traditional news although noticeably different in form and slightly different in function has fascinated me for as long as I have been involved with journalism. In high school we differentiated very little between print media with an auxiliary web element and a pure blog news source. Both processed news online, therefore both involved comparable processes and yielded comparable results. The more my own presence on the internet grew, the more apparent the difference between the two became and my curiosity intensified. The very aspect of blogging we routinely ignored in our high school class made it immensely different, and simultaneously less legitimate and more useful, as a tool of news. Blogging lacks the form of traditional journalism and in many scenarios that freedom, without the weight of an editor’s approval above the blogger, frees the writer to approach hot topics and otherwise untouchable subjects. However, it also occasionally throws the content itself into question for its strong bias or questionable sources. Without big names like those of powerful media companies to back up their claims, blogs can struggle to hold their own in the fierce competition for attention as a primary media provider.

 “In Indonesia, the average family earns the equivalent of $8 a day, according to the International Monetary Fund. But a baby delivery costs about $70 at a hospital, and a Caesarian section can cost as much as $700.

Lim believes Indonesia's high maternal and infant mortality rates are caused in part by these costs, which many women cannot meet.” (Almond)

        The average article on CNN begins or contains information very similar to the above. These paragraphs follow standard journalistic style and could have come from any other reputable news source. They cite relevant interviewees who speak on the issue and only the content, which differs in bias from provider to provider, could give away the site from which it originated. A news story, whether on FOX or CNN, contains these fundamental components and the credibility they lend these news providers makes them the standard for traditional news consumption. CNN, normally a television broadcast, uses its online presence to re-enforce its stance on international issues in a variety of subsections and provides online news to four major consumers, offering International, U.S., Asia and Middle Eastern specific home pages to cater to the individualized interests of people in all of these areas.

“In conjunction with the schools, Savery decided to offer the unique prize to one of the more than 500 fifth graders who took up an instrument in September to join orchestra or band.

Each was asked to write an essay on ‘Why I want to conduct the Bozeman Symphony.’

‘Over 60 students turned in essays and 12 students were chosen as finalists,’ according to Westlake. ‘The essays were judged by English teachers, music teachers, the district's instructional coaches and the director of the gifted and talented program.’

Pawlick, who plays oboe and piano, thought the competition would be fun when her band teacher, Jennifer Murphy, first announced it. Then Pawlick forgot until the night before.

Still, her essay, reprinted here, is lively and stood out enough to give her the honor.”(Hergett)

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle posts articles directly from is paper edition and covers largely local stories. Due to its relatively limited space, it covers fewer international affairs than my other sources. The stories it focuses on and features, like the parent article of the excerpt above, deal heavily with local issues and accolades. While it covers largely breaking news on an international scale, local papers possess neither the space nor manpower to present every breaking issue on an international scale. They choose their international news on the same standard that they choose their local, sifting through stories and selecting those that provide the most timely and relevant news to their readership.

“Mercenaries, goateed liberals, jackals who scavenge for money at foreign embassies in Moscow — those are some of the things Vladimir Putin has called Russia's opposition. But he's never before had to reckon with them as a significant threat to his rule.”(Schuster)

The above excerpt came from an article on Russian political protests on TimeWORLD’s webpage and showed up as the top result for timeliness on the Google News homepage. Google News features stories similar to this one at first glance. The search bar option lets people access local news at the click of a button, relevant to anywhere with a newspaper of their own. The news it chooses to feature, however, pertains almost exclusively to international, breaking stories. This style gives Google News and easy answer for what news to feature, it features almost unerringly the same stories to every user, every time and it does not pick and choose between international, national and local stories for each reader, allowing users to look up news they want, at their leisure.

“For the past several decades your retirement portfolio has been -- and continues to be -- used by Wall Street to undercut your career prospects, your earnings prospects, and I dare say your overall quality of life.”(Ucciferri)

The Huffington Post provides a perfect example of the freedoms associated with blogging that remove the constraints of traditional media. What a print newspaper or corporate online new source places on the editorial page, a blog can run anywhere on the website. Blogs follow a particular bias or bent, but within that bias they have tremendous freedom regarding what they run. Where traditional content must run past a half-dozen editors without being rejected, a blogger may run his or her own content at his or her own discretion.

Unlike many blogs, which post exclusively critiques of other news stories and opinions, The Huffington Post bridges the gap between blogs and traditional media sources by using traditional journalistic approaches to run a very non-traditional blog. The articles that appear on The Huffington Post contain sources and quotes and accomplished journalists and columnists participate and help to create a comprehensive and informative blog.

“The one question I want asked: The government of Sudan has expanded its ethnic cleansing campaign that began in Darfur into other regions including into the new country of South Sudan, despite attempts from Presidents Bush and Obama to stop it. As President, what would you do to stop this violence?” (Blackney)

Like The Huffington Post, Media Lizzy and Friends covers modern and important news from a far more journalistic standpoint than many blogs take. Elizabeth Blackney, Media Lizzy, uses her extensive background in journalism and law to craft relevant and well-written pieces about the current state of affairs from her vantage point of modern politics. The excerpt above came from an article detailing the one question she would present to presidential hopefuls given the opportunity. This post, like the majority of her blog archive, could run exclusively in the opinion section of a newspaper, but because she chose to post it on her private blog she can fill her posts with whatever she pleases and no one but her will need to worry about reaping the consequences.

“Yesterday, in a shocking move, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took the unprecedented step of overruling the FDA and blocking its decision to expand access to emergency contraception. I held out a brief hope that President Obama would intervene and allow the FDA to do its job unhampered by politics, but those hopes were soon dashed as well. Today, President Obama came out in support of Secretary Sebelius' action – and, in doing so, decided to play politics with the lives and health of young women.” (Stewart)

This guest article by columnist Kate Stewart, illustrates the particular motivation of MOMocrats, a website dedicated to Democratic daughters and mothers concerned with happenings with their political party. In this article Stewart breaks down her issue with Obama’s stance on Plan B from two perspectives. She examines the President’s actions first as a Democrat and then again as a mother of two young girls.

                That is, of course, precisely what the MOMocrats do. The bloggers choose issues important to them as voters and as parents raising the next generation of voters. They work to involve themselves politically and to instill those values in their children as well. Their articles are well researched but, for obvious reasons extremely biased and they contain considerably less quotes than other examples. MOMocrats defines itself by critique and analysis of public policies, not by cutting edge interviews with political up and comers.

Analysis

One of the most unsettling trends I ran across while looking through these websites, was the disparity in content from one edition to the next. The news that appeared in the U.S. could differ drastically, particularly in international content, from those airing in Europe or Asia. To a limited extent, these differences make sense, for one nation to give another nation’s local news precedence over its own would defeat the purpose of national news entirely. But certain international news companies, most notably TIME magazine, ran vastly different covers on several of their American issues that the cover that ran on every other one of their magazines. Likely these changes ran because they were an excellent marketing strategy; the other covers would have sold badly in American for their largely unpopular sentiments and drawn a harsh backlash from agitated readers. However, even if they chose not to market the magazine with stories such as “A Sea of Debt” or “Why the US Will Never Save Afghanistan,” those stories should have appeared somewhere in the piece itself. To cut them out because the editors believe that their audience would rather hear something nice than something true opens the door for a harder censorship to wind its way into the industry.

Similarly, locale and political bent affects what a website put up on its pages, perhaps even to the point of this type of mild over-editing. Blogs make a living calling out traditional journalism on its “soft censorship.” For that reason, blogs can be dangerous, unusual in form and in some cases, an industry saving technology. Unfortunately for the print publications, and online presences, who choose to indulge in this breed of omission, the internet always does what the internet does best: it snoops around and ferrets out false news. Fortunately for internet savvy readers, a little extra work and as RSS feed can yield comprehensive news coverage on their computer ever morning.

No media, be it CNN, FOX or the nightly local news, can every cover everything going on in the world, even on an international level alone. The need to pick and choose stories and some stories get swept under the rug. However, sometimes this soft censorship is real and deliberate. Big media companies make their profit by convincing people to buy their product. They know when a title will not sell and they know what content their audience wants to see. Blogs exist to pull unpopular or selectively popular news into the spotlight and call large corporations out for shunting it there in the first place.

Blogs allow individuals to share important information with an enormous market. An author can post an article with minimal editing or meddling from outside elements, and while this can result in an influx of spelling errors, it also lends itself to a different kind of credibility. When the author supervises the work from conception to release onto the internet, the final product much more closely resembles their initial intention. While it may contain errors or aspects they did not account for, small road bumps professional editors make their careers ironing out, it possesses the authenticity of a work of one person and one person alone.

Blogs also offer authors a unique point of view that allows them to critique the media they are incorporating into their posts and providing for others. Websites such as Tumblr and Facebook build their reputations on allowing their members to ostracize, poke fun at or outright mock traditional media and media created through those sites themselves. Their mock-ups become a new breed of media, dedicated to policing the old breeds and, in doing so, open themselves up for critique. These websites, because of this strange effect, are an easy way to let a topic go viral. They replace the content and form of true journalism with the wry irony of commentary and satire, which is vitally important, but too many people too often mistake for legitimate, researched journalism.

Often, blogs have fewer and less reliable sources than traditional media. They prefer to comment, rather than create, and by the nature of their circular existence they continue the chain of news they find, rather than providing new links themselves.

Due to these shortcomings inherent in the structure of what makes blogs so powerful, traditional journalism will never be fully replaced by blogs. They need one another to coexist and to continue existing. Consumers need to reliability of researched journalism, but they also need the clarification and research blogging demands from the sources from which it gleans its material. Blogs can call out large, corporate media, for omitting inconvenient news. Large, corporate media can provide resources and interview on topics on which blogs prefer to provide conjecture and commentary. In this manner, the two remain locked in a smooth cycle of creation and exposition that keep both in top form. As convenient as blogs are, to remain useful to the plugged0in, turned-up generation of today they must, at least slowly, become more credible, but traditional journalism continues to offer the mainstays of quality and presence that made it a permanent fixture in households. Now it just presents them in the package of the times.

Works Cited

Almond, Kyle. CNN.com. 11 December 2011. Article. 11 December 2011.

Blackney, Elizabeth. medializzy.wordpress.com. 22 November 2011. Article. 11 December 2011.

Hergett, Rachel. bozemandailychronicle.com. 11 December 2011. Article. 11 December 2011.

Schuster, Simon. time.com. 11 December 2011. Article. 11 December 2011

Stewart, Kate. MOMocrats.com. 11 December 2011. Article. 11 December 2011.

Ucciferri, Jeff. huffingtonpost.com. 11 December 2011. Article. 11 December 2011.