I know I made fun of the rules on Rosie's blog, but after typing a long response to Ivan's recent entry, I realized it needed to become a separate post. He wrote:
Journalism is an art, and thus it must serve the people first and foremost.
Not to sound cliche here, but what is art? He points to "idea" later on--yes, art is about an idea. But an idea is only as good as the mind that develops it, and we are unfortunately stuck inside our own brains. Our ideas are entirely about ourselves. We can't put ourselves before our ideas or our ideas before ourselves (and be sane).
Response: but our ideas are influenced by "the people," no?
Duh. I do think journalists create art in the broad sense of the term, but I think Ivan's description of this process isn't entirely accurate. The "idea" in journalism is that evolving knowledge of selection. Choosing the topics, the sources, the facts, and finally the words to convey this information. Newsworthiness. Entirely relative, and people with damn good social and cultural awareness (and some literary skills) turn out to be the best journalists.
Digital journalism arose because what began as one person's idea ("Hey--news online!") turned out to attract people, and they formed a codependent relationship. Online content is not just "the news." It's not just facts, despite being concise. Gawker is hype—wickedly hyped and manipulated “news” (sometimes facts). But people like it. Just like other people like "news." If anything, digital journalism picked up on the fact that there is a wide variety nowadays of what is considered "news," and it created a myriad of niches for not just "journalists," but anyone with the skills to communicate to people online.
Art used to be elitist. Now it is democratic. Our journalism is for the people, and by the people. In a way, it's becoming more like art.
Ivan Pereira @ Tue, 04/18/2006 - 8:04am
Jacqueline, I agree with your argument. Yes journalists should and must use their own ideas and creativity to produce the news. In the end the story should either give people valuable information that want to know about or give them information that they have no knowledge about.
The point I tried to make in my post is that journalists who write for selfish reasons, i.e money or popularity, hurt both themselves and the public. With the advent of digital media and growth of blogs I beleive that this selfishness in the media is deteriorating, becuase people have more demand for their news than their newsmakers. So in this case you're right, art is becoming more democratic.