PressEthic

Don't worry about the decreasing number of embedded journalists in Iraq, they're putting more of us in the depths of muckracking journalism territory: virtual reality.

A Reuters reporter is embedding himself in Second Life, an online community.

His virtual self (Adam Reuters) traipes around the virtual banks, grocery stores and tattoo parlors, and records the daily happenings and business trasactions of Second Life. The creepy-looking avatar has a "press tag" around his neck, indicating his lofty status in the community, I suppose. His "in-world" self (Adam Pasick, veteran tech and media journalist), reports on his findings.

You can read about them here, including an interview with Ginko Financial CEO Nicholas Portocarrero, who runs Second Life’s successful, "best-known bank" and a a government probe into taxing these virtual businesses.

I'm not sure if Adam Reuters will come up with anything interesting from this project, but his first Reuters article seems promising.

The news, along with the Iraq story, got me interested in the idea of embedding journalists. Why do we do it? What can we truly learn from it that we couldn't find out independently? In 2003, Aly Colon of the Poynter Institute wrote that we should Embed Journalists Everywhere.

According to Colon:

It challenges a journalistic tradition that exhorts reporters to remain detached from those they cover. It threatens the idea of "objectivity," -- held by some in journalism, and some members of the public -- which requires reporters not to have a stake or any feelings about who and what they cover. Embedding might move some journalists out of their comfort zone, especially those who prefer being on the outside looking in.

...

The idea of being "embedded" in military units almost sounds as if the journalists are "in bed" with them. But that's not how the journalists involved feel. They see it as a chance to capture life as it is lived.

He makes a good case: instead of the conventional way of reporting, which "often focuses on institutions, quotes officials, uses mostly statistics, favors abstract issues, and highlights problems," the reporters would have to dig deeper and find the "more intimate knowledge about the community by focusing on the personal, ordinary everyday events experienced by the people living there."

Colon asserted that reporters shouldn't become "advocates" for the communities, or geet "in bed" with them, but they should find the untold stories that reporters often overlook.

It may encourage them to become more inclusive of people who are different from them. It may push them to seek out people who might not receive coverage. It might help them fight their own bias and prejudices. All of this could lead to something we advocate at Poynter: doing the complete story.

Now, with reporters getting fired instead of hired and newspaper executives tightening their budget belts, I highly doubt we're going to get more virtual reality bureaus any time soon. But it's an interesting thought.