maramine blog

I was recently asked by Jack Oughton to answer four questions for Catch 22, an endeavor that takes a unique approach to cultivating journalists. Here are the questions, followed by my responses:

1: What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to aspiring journalists?

Be bold. It doesn’t take much to write a report, but it often takes plenty to have a reader walk away with something he or she didn’t have before.

2: What was the most important thing you did for your career?

The most important thing I did for my career was align myself with the right people. Everything in life is a team sport, and if you don’t find the right team you’ll never be happy. I work with great people and even on terrible days, I’m better off than I would be had I decided to compromise and play for the wrong team.

3: Did you always want to work in the media?

Definitely not… I went to school for business. Then I took a wrong turn somewhere and worked as a marketing exec for about four years. Then I took another wrong turn and found myself working as a business development exec for another three years. It wasn’t until I grew thoroughly tired of constantly addressing the same challenges that I wandered into writing and editing professionally.

4: Lastly, what is good journalism to you?

To me, good journalism answers burning questions people didn’t even know they wanted answers to. Good journalism translates the emotions of a situation so accurately and profoundly that the reader has no choice but to feel them as though he or she was there first hand. Good journalism leaves the reader in a better place than he or she started, or in a worse place, but never in the same place.

Good journalism addresses both sides of a story thoroughly, but it also inherently expresses opinion. People have opinions and people want to read opinions. They want desperately to nod their heads in agreement, and even more desperately to shake their fists in outrage. Journalists are sometimes trained to be impartial messengers who merely regurgitate news. This has its place, but one would be hard pressed to find a respected journalist who didn’t get his or her hands dirty quite often. In fact, in the eyes of many, good journalism might not be journalism at all.

—

It should be noted that while my work does often intersect with that of a journalist, and while my objectives do, at times, align with some of those mentioned above, I do not consider myself to be a journalist. More on that here.

When asked my opinion on the difference between a journalist and a blogger, my half-joking response never changes:

A blogger tells you what happened and what he thinks about what happened. A journalist tells you what happened and then uses other people’s words to tell you what he thinks about what happened.

In other words, bloggers are forthcoming with their opinions. Journalists feed loaded questions to analysts and experts until they get the quotes they need to share their opinions.

This is true. But I say it jokingly because it is one item in a laundry list of differences between journalists and bloggers.

For a more complete assessment, see How to Tell a Journalist from a Blogger, by Jolie O’Dell.

This is a post that every blogger should read.

Calling yourself a journalist simply because you write about politics or technology or anything else on the Internet is, simply put, ridiculous. It is akin to calling yourself an Interior Designer because you selected your own shower curtain, or a “Social Media Guru” because you have a Twitter account.

It’s stupid.

Journalists, as O’Dell points out in great detail, belong to a specific subset of professional writers. Bloggers, or at least those who blog professionally, belong to a very different subset.

In speaking with a journo friend of mine about O’Dell’s piece, we both agreed with her on almost every count. There was one area, however, where our mutual opinion strayed greatly from hers. The idea that journalists are inherently better than bloggers.

My friend and I both laughed at this notion.

This blanket concept shines throughout O’Dell’s piece, and it clearly comes from someone who has been called a blogger one too many times, and who has taken great offense to this repeated error. It’s an honest mistake, though, considering she writes professionally for a blog.

Like any other line of work, there are good journalists and very, very bad ones. There are also good bloggers and very, very bad ones. To suggest that one profession should universally command more respect than the other is patently ridiculous.

And directly comparing these two professions might be considered ridiculous as well - like comparing a novelist to a copywriter. Are they similar? Yes, both jobs involve writing.

There was a time when journalism was sensationalized. Journalists were enviable studs who raced against deadlines, had sex with secretaries and received barking commands from cigar-chomping Editors. They worked for respected newspapers that the country relied on to learn about the latest evil Communist plot.

Times, however, have changed.

Journalists now work for struggling media giants that regret having invested more in M&A and real estate than their own futures. Journalists themselves are no longer enviable studs, but are instead aging curmudgeons who spend more time dancing around the obvious than reporting the facts.

(Stop crying - these are all intentional sarcastic generalizations)

Each of O’Dell’s points still holds true, for the most part, but the devil is in the details:

Journalists are professionals. Bloggers are hacks.

Had bloggers existed in the 1950s, this would have probably been true. But it’s 2010 and I know many bloggers with far more skill, professionalism and integrity than most journalists. I also know many bloggers who can write circles around most journalists.

Perhaps these are a couple of the reasons so many old media companies now employ bloggers.

Journalism and blogging each have a very important place in the business of disseminating information. One, however, is not invariably better or more worthy of respect than the other.

Compare individuals, not generalizations or prejudices.

—

Postscript:

Am I a journalist? No.

I didn’t go to school for journalism. I studied business (and later, music).

I tell it like I see it. I write what I want.

I make my opinions clear. I make my biases known.

I make generalizations. I care more about being engaging than being careful.

Oh, and I tell readers where I got my story, not just where stats and quotes came from.