Is It A Blog or Is It News?
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Something that I’ve been noticing a lot of, lately is blogs that try to call themselves “news” sites. I’m not saying that some blogs don’t deliver some news, but a lot of these blogs really give the writer’s opinion on particular topics. It’s usually not unbiased news, but rather editorial pieces that, if written in the real world, would be stuck in a small section called “Letters to the editor”.
I’ve noticed it for a while, but what really got my attention, this morning is one of Prokofy’s tweets. Now, I have a lot of respect for her opinions and I agree with a “lot” of what she says, but I really wish that she wouldn’t call her new “blog” (The Second Life Record) a “newspaper”. Call it what it is. That’s what she’s been known to say about a lot of other things, so if she reads this, I hope she’ll understand what I mean.
I’m not saying that I won’t read stories at places that do this. A lot of them have some really great information and I learn a lot of things that I otherwise might not have known. But just call it what it is, is all I’m saying. If you want to call it “news”, make a section for news. If you want to call them “editorials”, make a section for opinion/editorials.
“This” is a blog. My opinion, all the time. Can bloggers be reporters? Sure! Can opinions be news, though? Not at all.
August 20th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I disagree totally. I think in a close society like Second Life, run by a proprietary company, which does not tell you what it is doing or why (and Linden Lab is better than most, but still like this), this kind of format, which involves first-person exploration and “community journalism,” is as good as it gets.
There’s no noon press briefing; there are no State Dept. sources leaking; there’s no Freedom of Information Act. There’s only, say, Meta Linden’s office hour. And during that office hour, to get anything of value, sometimes you have to be opinionated and provocative. In reporting news from such closed sources, taking a first-person, even ironic or satirical stance is warranted, and it’s how newspapers in closed societies always develop precisely because of the constraints they are under.
It also goes without saying that reporting on people’s opinions *is* news in these synthetic worlds.
The pieces in these blogs aren’t mere “letters to the editor,” however. They’re what we like to call “columns” or “op-ed” pieces. Go to any major newspaper’s op-ed pieces, go and look at any famous columnist, and you will find just this first-person, often snarky and even sarcastic or opinionated point of view. It’s not just letters material.
I’m going to call what is essentially a blog with people contribution a “newspaper” because I think that’s what’s required to get people to focused on reporting stories, following stories, digging into sources, interviewing people, and so on. I don’t pretend that in an environment where people are unpaid, or will be paid very little, that you can rise much beyond the first-person community journalism role. If some events can be reported as wire stories or some people interviewed rigorously, great, but it’s work, and the ability to check sources hugely limited.
Thus “news” like “Eric Linden Leaves Lab; Starts Consulting Company” is something you find out by accident. You will never get anyone to answer. In 3 years, I’ve never received a single reply to a single IM to Eric Linden; I doubt I’d get one today. No one knows the circumstances over his departure; no one ever will. That’s why a first-person story getting to the fact of his departure, and also commenting on his role in creating the natural look of SL, is about as far as you can go with that story.
All you have to do to ponder these things more deeply is to picture how a “real newspaper” could try to cover SL. And for that, you merely have to look at the SL “news scene”. Reuters, which is obviously a real news service with real wire service standarsd, can only cover the world superficially; if they get an interview with a Linden, great, but they get the company line delivered to them pat, and they often don’t have the time or connections to go find the back story or counter-story from vested residents. When they report a story like the stock exchange turmoil, they can only treat it very superficially, often without any of the depth of knowledge that comes from actual practical world experience. Thus, not a single major real life outlet has reported the obvious that anyone inworld has discovered about the WICs at the WSE.
One could give a blog like this a cutesy name like Village Pump (which Rob Linden gave to the wiki discussing the software) or the Cracker Barrel or something, but “newspaper” is really the point: you are trying to report news. The news is not going to take the standard form of an old-fashioned newspaper that had a hierarchical chain of command, one editor-in-chief, and a “line”. That’s because it’s new media. I actually have a lot of respect for the old newspaper format with an editor and editorial line and standards, and find the shifting sands of new media to be suspect. I totally take your point but I can only say that to cover Second Life in that old-fashioned way would fail to deliver anything of interest or value.
Case in point: there is a slew of RL media now covering the story of “corporations leave Second Life.” It couldn’t be more wildly skewed and false. There are like 3 that left, after bombing. Meanwhile, numerous others stay, some of them very huge like IBM, and others pour in. The traditional news just grabbed what “made headlines” and grabbed from a decided sectarian animus that you aren’t surprised old media has about new media. But just because such a story appears in a newspaper called “The Los Angeles Times,” suddenly, for you, it is blessed, because it is in “newspaper” format.
Yet it is totally skewed and false (and I say this as a non-Kool-Aid drinker of SL), completely missing the complexity of the story, and putting forth as much of a biased opinion as any “blogger” that you hold to be of lesser value.
Those are the challenges you have to think about.
August 20th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I didn’t say that I hold bloggers to a lesser value, at all. In fact, I would personally rather read somebody’s opinion and first-hand experiences than anything by an “established” media source.
I’ve seen (and been involved in) quite a few different “old media” stories where facts are just wrong and quotes are taken out of context. Most of the time, RL media stories are just “flat”, lacking any feeling or “first person” view. A lot of times, things are just taken off the “wire” and printed, without any changes.
I guess what I really meant by this is that it might be “better” to distinguish these sites (yours isn’t the only one that does this… just an example I used due to the timing of the launch and my thoughts coming together at the same time) as something other than “news”, which would make it more personal. More interesting. More complex. More open to other’s opinions.
The fact that we can inject our own opinions in comments, like this, is a huge step forward, away from the way “old media” delivers news. Even if they do sometimes deliver biased or incorrect news, there is usually no way to “call” them on it, because of the lack of comments, or allowing comments that are heavily moderated.
I totally understand having rules for people who leave comments (especially in your case), but even with those rules in place, the “news” is much more open to conversation because they aren’t “newspapers” (which I usually refer to as “yesterday’s news”).
August 21st, 2007 at 11:54 am
>>>>> “Go to any major newspaper’s op-ed pieces, go and look at any famous columnist, and you will find just this first-person, often snarky and even sarcastic or opinionated point of view.” <<<<<
Prok, I would hardly call you a famous columnist, ROFLOL. As the matter of fact, some of your critics that claim THEMSELVES famous in SL do so at their own whim, to suit their egos.
This is one of the problems I see with bloggers in general with bloggers reporting news. They all seem to want to put their own opinionated spin on things to influence public thinking and gain a reputation that way.
As a real-life media guy that has been in nearly every department of the publishing biz for over a dozen years, this is all a little bit laughable to me. If you want to blog, fine… just do so under the disclaimer of YOUR blog being YOUR opinion.
Blogs are not news sites.