Is This Journalism?

Submitted by Paul Colarusso on Sun, 03/05/2006 - 1:02pm.

Blogs and online media sites are growing by the second these days. The technology now available allows anyone to start his own blog or website. But are they all journalists?

For Nick Sylvester, a senior associate editor of the Village Voice, the answer is no. He has been suspended for fabricating materials for the week’s cover story, a look at the “secret society of pickup artists.”

Why, Nick? You’re a journalist writing for a pretty reputable and witty New York City paper. Why would you make this stuff up?

The Village Voice picked up Nick from the online music site Pitchfork. He did mostly music reviews, but also had a few features under his belt.

Well, it looks like we have another Stephen Glass on our hands. Turns out Nick fabricated another story from August!

Nick, Stephen, Jayson Blair -- you are the guys that give honest journalists a bad name. Not to mention the tarnish you bring to your respected publications. Your actions also fuel an ever-growing conundrum: What separates the bloggers from the journalists? The answer must be integrity and honesty.

Adam Raymond @ Mon, 03/06/2006 - 6:24pm

Bloggers can have integrity and honesty. We most certainly do.

Anonymous (not verified) @ Mon, 03/06/2006 - 9:19pm

Journalists, of the web and print variety, are both subject to the principles of honesty and integrity. Does having your work in a tangible form make you a little bit better than Jessica Coen? Would you rather pay $4.99 for gawker mobile or $19.40 for a NY Times paper dropped on the ground floor of your building?

Anonymous (not verified) @ Tue, 03/07/2006 - 11:38am

What separates journalists from most bloggers (and I say most because some bloggers, like Josh Marshall, are journalists) are editors. Journalists are subject to gatekeepers, who act as a defense against pure opinion getting printed, aired or posted, in the guise of news. Many bloggers are not subject to editors, who exist to keep journalists honest.

Many bloggers do some good work. Many do some lousy work. But I'm from the old school of journalism (the old school being NYU in the late '70s) and do not consider many bloggers to be journalists in the purest sense of the word.

liz (not verified) @ Thu, 03/23/2006 - 4:47am

surely any one that writes has the right to be a 'journalist'. Why should a journalist only be those that are featured in print based papers. Surely journalism is someone expressing how they feel to others and documenting their findings. Just because their using new technology available to the world doesn't mean that their NOT a journalist.

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A group blog exploring our media world. Produced by the Digital Journalism: Blogging course at New York University, Spring 2007.

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