I try not to comment on other people's blogs, mainly because what they have to say is usually inane rubbish.
But I am a big fan of Fleet Street Blues and their recent blog about what journalism is actually all about - ie getting news stories and not creaming over the latest web 2.0 update - met with a predictable response from the 20-somethings who think they are the new pioneers of this ancient game.
What these techno fucks singularly fail to understand is that, without the actual news content needed to attract readers to a newspaper, website, twitter page, blog, or even a facebook page, what you have is nothing. An irrelevant self-aggrandising pile of cack.
What bloggers produce - mostly woeful, biased opinion and comment based on others' news stories - is not anything approaching news.
It's just shit. It's the equivalent of the pub bore crapping on over a pint of mild to anyone who will listen.
(And, yes, I certainly do include this vanity driven, executive wank of a project I am running within that description.)
Listen up fucktards, the web is just a method of delivery. Simple as that. Like paid fors, then frees, newsletters and fanzines. Fuck it, even graffiti.
You do realise that Google alerts are real stories which have to be written by an actual reporter before you get them?
Journalism is about getting news and telling others about it. Knowing your patch and going out with a notebook is how it is done.
The web is not the future of news gathering, it is just the paperboy.
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I think you'll find blogging is an art mate. And as I've been following the top bloggers Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick, I think you'll find that Web 2.0 is a powerful tool to get a message across. Granted some blogs are full of rubbish, but there are some who know what they're doing. And isn't journalism also about getting a message across, regardless of the platform?
ReplyDeleteGet a message across? who to? nobody is reading this shite, or anybody elses shite, apart from a handful of people nodding sagely and agreeing with every word.
ReplyDeleteJournalism is about finding stuff out and telling people what they don't know. "Getting a message across" is comment. A very different thing.
There was a superb cartoon in the New Yorker of two dogs, with one saying: "I used to have a blog, but I decided to go back to just barking incessantly..."
Plenty, I am talking about NEWS not opinion. Any prick can spout nonsense. Look at me. But this is not NEWS. Pay attention.
ReplyDeleteBy using the word 'message' you are clearly missing any points I am trying to make. Read a newspaper - online or otherwise - and learn what journalism is actually about.
Here's a question for you. Why do so many journalists read blogs then, and then cunningly pretend that the stories they have found are there own. If anything, there are some lazy newspaper journalists around who cant be bothered to use their brains to find a story? All I'll further say is when I meant get a message across, are there not newspaper journalists who spout rubbish via newspaper columns in the nationals, I'm thinking Murdoch press here - as comment? What's the difference between that and a blog? Reason why blogs are widely read I think you'll find is they are more conversational and there is a human being behind the brand. Not just someone puppying what the owner wants or thinks. And yes, I've done HARD NEWS myself. I just prefer comment and opinion through blogging. Go and visit Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick on how to blog properly and professionally.....Not all journalists make good bloggers, and vice versa.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
A blogger is indeed a columnist and if my original post had been about fucking columnists then you may indeed have a valid point.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience there are very few blogs that produce any actual real news whatsoever, but if there happens to be one in my area who comes up with some tales, of course I am going to nick them because
a) my readership is a fuck site larger than the handful of tools reading the blog
and
b) I don't give a shit where information comes from as long as I have the best possible stories in my paper (yes, and on my website)
As it is you still fail to read what I have written.
I am talking about the actual gathering of news. Be it court stories, council meetings, murder, rape and mayhem, corruption and scandal.
Fuck it even charity events, flower shows and facepainting if you like.
If you cannot do this with any aplomb then - and I don't give a shit if you invented the fucking internet - you have nothing remotely approaching NEWS on your blog.
You have conjecture and comment, analysis and rant.
You say you prefer comment and opinion.
But what happens if there is no longer any actual news to comment on because you have all disappeared so far up your own arses you don't talk to anyone anymore to find out what is actually going on.
Someone has to provide the stuff you ponficating anally retentive idiots spraffle on about.
I am also not talking about making money, I am talking about getting information that is relevant.
Read my blog.
I don't give a shit about opinion because, like arseholes, everyone has got one.
Not everyone can do my job but I can do yours.
Good love a bit of healthy debate. That's what blogging is all about - and you can't necessarily get that on a mainstream newspaper? Not sure I agree wirh your last point though!
ReplyDeleteIt still ain't news tho! ; )
ReplyDeleteI think you're basically spouting a load of self righteous bollocks claiming that bloggers can't write news. Journalists can be bloggers and vice versa.
ReplyDeleteby your definition, a newspaper is still just a paperboy - the medium of the news doesn't matter, it's the news itself which is important - your focus has been taken from "who is writing it" to "how is it presented?"
and you're right, opinions are like arseholes - take this fire in Soho the other day - the news broke on blogs and twitter and suchlike by people who were there... does that make them journalists? probably not, but it does make them a genuine news medium. If someone who doesn't write a blog, wasn't there but is a news gatherer and thus published an official story 8 hours later... that doesn't make them more relevant.
I agree, it's all a means of delivery, but the web isn't being described as a news generator. It's being described as the means of getting it to the public.
sorry, I realised that to suit this chain of comments I need to write a long list of swear words because that means I am more respected.
Look at plenty of real journalists... they're just like those stupid dogs in the NYT except they write it on paper and pretend it's important and justified... because they write it on paper.
get fucked stud.
You can twitter and blog and post things on facespace and mybook all you damn like, but if you can't get the facts right and condense it down to 250 words that people can understand, then your not a fucking news medium, monkey boy.
ReplyDeleteYou're one of the loonies that phone me up and tell me stuff which I then craft and sculpt until its readable.
Are you telling me a real journalist didn't know about the Soho fire? of copurse they did. The difference is, before they consigned their report they checked their facts and made sure what they were saying was as close to accurate as it could be.
Otherwise news gathering would simply be people going "OMIGOD DID YOU SEE THAT? THERES LIKE A BIG FIRE AND EVERYTHING!!!!!"
Who says these facts aren't right? and who says that a lot of these blogs are 250 words the people understand? someone has delusions of grandeur methinks.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I am one of those loones that calls you up to tell you stuff - I'm one of those people that calls you up and gives you the research that you fastidiously went and got from your desk...
A lot of people on this new fangled internet that you appear to be so scared of, do check their facts and do make it accurate.
I think you're putting bloggers in the same bracket as Hoodies, Londoners, the French and people from council estates. That bracket is "those things that people don't understand and rile against because they're scared"
fucktard.
"Look at plenty of real journalists... they're just like those stupid dogs in the NYT except they write it on paper and pretend it's important and justified... because they write it on paper."
ReplyDeleteAnd who pays for that paper you dumb shit?