Veteran Newsman Rips Blogs and Citizen Journalism
Posted on January 26, 2008 - Filed Under citizen journalism, media |
Daniel Schorr, at age 91, is a news legend. During his 60+ year career in journalism has seen the evolution of news in print, radio, TV and now the Internet. In a recent interview with The Columbus Dispatch, Schorr professes his disdain at bloggers and citizen journalists.
Perhaps being part of establishment for so long as eschewed Schorr’s view of journalism. After all Schorr himself got his start at the age of twelve. In 1929, he came upon a woman who had jumped or fallen from the roof of his apartment building. After he called the police, Schorr phoned a local newspaper and was paid $5 for his information. Maybe if the same incident had occurred today, a young Schorr would have blogged about it instead, complete with images from the scene taken from his cell phone camera. Or to put it bluntly, Shorr would have been a citizen journalist, the very thing he now decries.
From The Columbus Dispatch interview:
Q: In some commentaries, you touch on the latest journalistic trends, such as blogs and citizen journalism. Do you embrace this form of news gathering?
A: I can’t embrace it. Not after what I’ve been through at the hands of the copy editors’ desks. I have suffered many, many arguments about what I’ve wanted to say — whether it was grammatically correct, factually correct and all of that — and I want everybody to have to experience what I experienced.
But today, your blogger is totally free. He is his own reporter, his own editor, his own publisher, and he can do whatever he wants.
A person like me who believes in the tradition of a discipline in journalism can only rue the day we’ve arrived at where we don’t need discipline or anything. All you need is a keyboard.
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6 Responses to “Veteran Newsman Rips Blogs and Citizen Journalism”
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it also says in the interview that he still uses a typewriter. And I thought I was behind the times b/c i still don’t have Leopard! gimme a break.
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Is this a surprise, how many veterans have come out in favour of the web? These guys need to get with the times.
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