8 Comments

1. He's a nice guy says:

   August 22, 2008 at 12:12 pm

   Bob’s actually a nice guy despite all the bad things said about him. He certainly isn’t on the take – he’s smarter than that.

   I thought today’s article was good.
2. Russell says:

   August 22, 2008 at 12:52 pm

   I agree that it’s disgraceful that some journalists just pilfer information they want from other’s reporting and research without giving credit. Today’s mainstream media, not just the local outlets, are lazy. All they really do is sit back and wait for press releases and stories to come to them. They ask a couple “tough” question once the story comes their way and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. There are no more reporters working the beat, sniffing around for stories and following leads from well-positioned tipsters and we’re all worse off for it.

   What really gets me in all of the events of the past week, though, is how the local media was happy to use Illuzi and his blog as a legitimate news source. They took what he posted and ran with it. But then they turned around and attacked him and all blogs for doing exactly what they just reported as a legitimate news story. This wouldn’t have really gone far if it just stayed on Illuzi’s blog and wasn’t picked up by anyone. The story, or at least the rumors, have been buzzing about for years, but no one ever bothered to follow through on any of it. See, the media has to attack the blogs as evil because blogs are now filling in the gaps that journalists have left open. This used to be the bread and butter of newspapers everywhere, but since television has gained the upper hand, newspapers’ limited resources don’t allow for this resource consuming work anymore. And television is too flashy to get mired in tedious investigations. They have to attack you and all blogs because you scare. It’s easier to do that than to get back to the job they’re supposed to be doing. Now that they’ve said all they needed to say, they can go back and sit by the fax and wait for the next story to fall into their lap.
3. Historical Pessimist says:

   August 22, 2008 at 2:16 pm

   Bob McCarthy seems to have been off the NY26 beat the last two days.
4. good point says:

   August 22, 2008 at 2:42 pm

   Russell – from time to time you show that you are a reasonable guy. This is definitely one of those times. Well said.
5. Bill Altreuter says:

   August 22, 2008 at 5:13 pm

   The blog form is poorly understood, especially by the mainstream press. The Buffalo News is not even really clear on the difference between a blog and a blog post, and if you can’t get even the basic nomenclature right what hope is there for you?

   I think a source of some confusion is that weblogs have become so ubiquitous. In early days people had personal home pages (usually pictures of their cats). The primal blog was probably robotwisdom.com, started around 1997. It established the form as a series of regularly updated posts on a topic or topics of interests to the author or authors in reverse chronological order, with the most recent at the top of the page. There were a couple of applications that made it a little easier (anybody remember pitas?), and generally these were more like on-line communities. For the most part you had to self-code the html, and you had to know how to use ftp.

   The form is really only about ten years old, but that’s a long time in internet years, and there have been a lot of mutations, but Rebecca Blood’s observations about blogging and journalism remain valid, particularly now that the barriers to entry have essentially disappeared: The weblog’s greatest strength — its uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice — is also its greatest weakness. News outlets may be ultimately beholden to advertising interests, and reporters may have a strong incentive for remaining on good terms with their sources in order to remain in the loop; but because they are businesses with salaries to pay, advertisers to please, and audiences to attract and hold, professional news organizations have a vested interest in upholding certain standards so that readers keep subscribing and advertisers keep buying. Weblogs, with only minor costs and little hope of significant financial gain, have no such incentives.

   “The very things that may compromise professional news outlets are at the same time incentives for some level of journalistic standards. And the very things that make weblogs so valuable as alternative news sources — the lack of gatekeepers and the freedom from all consequences — may compromise their integrity and thus their value. There is every indication that weblogs will gain even greater influence as their numbers grow and awareness of the form becomes more widespread. It is not true, as some people assert, that the network will route around misinformation, or that the truth is always filtered to widespread awareness. Rumors spread because they are fun to pass along. Corrections rarely gain much traction either in the real world or online; they just aren’t as much fun.”
6. jen says:

   August 23, 2008 at 12:22 pm

   Not all media are alike, that’s why a Buffalo New Print journalist knew the right thing to do was attribute where he got his information, the TV Reporter, probably never crossed his mind. However, who does video better? TV hands down, now that print medias have gotten into the video business ala the web (unless they hire someone with previous video/TV editing expereince.) Most (not all!) of the hand-journalist-a-camera and-let-them-edit-it, not so good.)
7. jen says:

   August 23, 2008 at 12:30 pm

   I guess my point was that each individual media has it’s strength, TV reporters usually aren’t writers, and sometime the printed story reads a little “strange” because it’s not written to be a story at all, but a TV Script. However, someone should teach them to attribute their information.