Tag Archives: personal

Journalism, Professionalism, and the Turing Test

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What’s the way forward for journalists? Doubling down on the traditional ideals of objectivity and impartiality? Embracing the subjective, personality-driven approach of social media? Or is there some uncertain, ill-defined middle way?

Turing Test By Bilby (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsThose are some of the questions being raised recently by a number of new-media observers, most notably GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram, who’s lately been rolling out one must-read blog post after another.

The problem with traditional news is that traditional journalists are increasingly unnecessary to produce it. Robot reporters are cornering the market on facts, as companies like Narrative Science and Automated Insights perfect the science of teaching software to turn data into news stories.

If basic news becomes a fungible commodity, one obvious alternative for journalists is what Ben Huh says great reporters already do: convey not simply the facts, but their subjective emotions about those facts.  But this, he says, is a “very, very dangerous” approach.

That’s one lesson that could be drawn from reporter Anne Sutherland’s recent suspension from the Montreal Gazette for remarks she made on Twitter. Covering a “nearly naked” protest by university students, she tweeted a number of photos of the protestors accompanied by “snarky” comments about their physiques. Neither her Twitter followers nor her employers found it amusing.

Writing about Ben Huh, GigaOm’s Ingram says that “in order to be effective, journalism needs to be personal.” But doesn’t Sutherland’s seemingly personal reaction to the protestors prove the opposite, and that the dangers of being personal outweigh the benefits?

I think not. I don’t know her, of course, but I’d guess the problem isn’t that she was being human or that she was being too personal. Rather, she was responding to the wrong instincts and emotions.  She was there as a journalist, but reacting as an average, and thoughtless, bystander.

In a post written before Sutherland’s misstep, Steve Buttry addressed a similar issue in explaining “how to respond to staff members who were using crude language and behaving unprofessionally on Twitter.” On social media, he says, journalists must be personable, yes, but also professional:

“A professional journalist using Twitter should behave professionally. Your profile should identify you as a journalist with your news organization. You should behave accordingly.”

I don’t disagree. But I wonder if professionalism is sufficient. The problem for me is that professionalism is more shield than guiding light. Too often, it is just a way of doing what won’t get you fired.

To succeed in a personal medium, you ultimately need a personal standard. The preeminent question to ask yourself now may not be Is this a professional and objective statement of the facts? but rather Is this my best, most honest, and most personally true assessment of those facts?

This might not seem like the appropriate corrective to the all-too-personal Sutherland. But I suspect her reactions were not truly personal. They sound, rather, like received views, the trite and formulaic reactions not of a person, but of a type of person. It is a behavioral response that could be easily programmed into a Narrative Science algorithm: If see hairy body, then tweet “Ewww.”

In gauging how to handle social media, maybe what journalists need is not so much a standard of professionalism as a kind of Turing test. That is, could what you’re writing be produced by a computer imitating a human reporter?

The test is not whether the content is dryly factual or snarkily silly, superbly impartial or grossly biased. Those traits are easy to replicate. Instead, the test should be whether the prose is truly personal. Does it reflect a real consciousness struggling to find the truth, or an automaton juggling ones and zeroes?

Such a test can never be very precise. But journalism, whether conducted in traditional or social media, would be the better for it.

Blog Comments: Chaos or Currency?

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Are comments more trouble than they are literally worth? According to Animal’s Joel Johnson, the answer is a resounding Yes.

I believe I’m right, and I think it’s important to start the discussion. And my theory is very easy to disprove: just run your own analysis on your traffic and determine exactly how many people are scrolling down the page to read comments. Then figure out how much you’re spending to maintain comment communities that are civil, vibrant, and not an embarassment sitting just below your own work. I bet once you run all the numbers, you’d discover you’d be saving money simply by not having comments at all. (You’d probably save a bundle on therapy for authors alone.)

Johnson’s objections to comments are many. First, he says, most of them are worthless. Only 1 or 2 in 100 “actually provoke discussion or elucidate another’s argument,” he argues.

Next, he says, comments don’t make any money. (But then what does for most bloggers? Please let me know.)

Moreover, commenters are often rude to authors. Comments, he says, are a dinner party, and “if I’ve invited you to have a seat at my table, at least have the courtesy to not call me an idiot for serving you food slightly different than you preferred.”

Finally, and most damningly, almost no one actually reads the comments.

I’m sure all this is true for high-traffic, commercial blogs. But I’m willing to bet that for the vast majority of blogs, the problems Johnson and others experience at mainstream, consumer oriented blogs like Animal simply don’t exist.

One reason, of course, is that most blogs, like mine, alas, don’t get many comments to begin with (other than the spammy variety that Akismet so silently and effectively filters out).

But some are so clearly and consistently focused on a single community interest that they generate with almost every post a huge number of intelligent, interesting, and polite comments. For some of my favorite blogs, in fact, the comments are at least as good as the original post, and often better.

Though I haven’t asked them, I’d guess that Steve Buttry, Mark Schaefer, Mitch Joel, Porter Anderson, and others too numerous to mention here don’t just tolerate their comments, but live for them. Certainly the comments they approve and respond to all reflect a genuine and productive engagement with the topic.

In addition to a carefully targeted focus, there are probably a couple of other reasons these bloggers get such a wealth of thoughtful and useful comments.

First, they are all personal. These bloggers are heavily invested in their blogs, and take the responsibility for every word that appears in them.

Second, they are all genuinely good, thoughtful, and generous people. They attract like personalities that come to enhance the discussion, not to degrade it.

So, yes, if your aim as a blogger is first and foremost to make money, you may want to disable commenting. For the rest of us, though, comments, not cash, are the currency we seek.

30 Lessons from 30 Blog Posts in 30 Days

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Twenty-nine days ago, I set out to write a post a day for this blog. Somehow, despite a couple of late nights, I managed to achieve my goal. Though no one’s going to hand me a blogger’s version of their badge, I feel something akin to the mixture of pride and relief all those successful NaNoWriMo writers must be experiencing today.

Sophie

My less-than-helpful blogging companion

In writing 30 posts, I more than doubled my previous most productive month, way back in October 2009, and far exceeded my usual average. Though I didn’t manage to limit myself to a half-hour of writing time per post, I’m certain I was more efficient than in the past, when I could linger over a single paragraph for several hours.

Moreover, I discovered that my writing was none the worse for the time limits and daily quota I imposed on myself. What I feared might turn out to be a month of sub-par blog posts ended up at least as good as my average work, and possibly better.

But aside from hitting an arbitrary target, have I really achieved anything?  Can I, or you, for that matter, learn anything from the experience?

I think so. In fact, if I set my mind to it, I can come up with 30 things I’ve learned from my month of daily blogging. It makes, admittedly, for a rather longish, slightly punch-drunk, tl;dr kind of list. But if I’ve gained nothing else from the experience, dear reader, I now have a new appreciation for the value of perseverance. Make it through the following list and you might feel it too.

  1. More content means more blog traffic. Yes, I know it’s obvious. But seeing is believing. November, not yet concluded, has already witnessed more visitors and page views than any previous month. I may have almost as many regular readers now as Rex Hammock.
  2. However, content without marketing is like a cart without a horse. No matter how good it is, content can’t go anywhere by itself. It needs to be marketed. When I tweeted about my content, it clearly got more page views than when I didn’t.
  3. There’s nothing like help from people in high places. By far the most visitors I got on any day this month was when The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal retweeted one of my posts.
  4. Writing every day makes you a better writer. To quote Jeff Goins quoting Frank Viola quoting T.S. Eliot, “Writing everyday is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.” Whatever you may think of my writing here today, I can assure you that it’s improved from a month ago.
  5. Writing short is hard. If you’re Seth Godin, you can blow a reader’s mind with a three-sentence post. However, all but one of us aren’t Seth Godin, and it usually takes many more sentences to make our points convincingly. Aim for brevity; be satisfied with clarity.
  6. Scheduling a time to write is a good idea that rarely works in practice. I tried to follow Paul Conley’s advice, but reality kept intervening.
  7. Set strict rules for your writing. I couldn’t have written a post a day without the rules I set at the beginning. Arbitrary restrictions and goals spur creativity. That’s why good sonnets are easier to write than good free verse.
  8. Break your rules as often as necessary. To be honest, my rules were more honored in the breach than the observance. If I had followed them religiously, I would not have met my goal.
  9. Good comments beget good posts. The best comment I had this month essentially accused me—in a nice way—of idiocy. It led me to reconsider my ideas in another post that, if it didn’t rectify my errors, put nice polish on them.
  10. Write about other bloggers. Not only does it give you something to talk about, but it’s what the social web is all about. Share the links!
  11. Do Q & A interviews. Even better than writing about other bloggers is asking them to speak in their own words, as I did with Mark Schaefer.
  12. Encourage contributors. It would have broken my rules, but if you want to fill your blog with good content every day, well-chosen guest bloggers can be a big help.
  13. Get used to repeating yourself. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Most of us are driven by a few idées fixes. Repetition is a way of developing those ideas.
  14. Now and then, try something completely different. Such as saying the opposite of what you just suggested.
  15. Accept your imperfections. Perfection is something you work towards. Though you may never get there, the only way you can get closer is through your mistakes.
  16. Make bold statements. Your readers, too, will accept your imperfections. It’s all right if you don’t completely understand or believe what you’re saying. It’s a blog. You’re testing out an idea, not writing legislation.
  17. Don’t wait until after supper to start writing a post. Especially if you had a bit too much wine.
  18. On the other hand, consider writing your post the night before. No morning is so glorious to wake up to as the one when you’ve already written your post for the day.
  19. Keep your pets well fed. One of my cats prefers to eat small amounts of expensive canned food every half-hour or so. I can’t leave her food out, though, because my other cat will eat any amount of any food at any time. So my picky cat likes to remind me to feed her by standing on her hind legs and tapping me gently on the arm with her paw. Inevitably, she does so just as I am about to break through my hours-long writer’s block.
  20. Use an editorial calendar, but don’t make it a fetish. It can help to know days in advance what you’ll write about, but sometimes when you start on it, you realize it’s a terrible, boring subject. Always be prepared to change your topic at the last moment.
  21. Go on a Twitter diet. I don’t mean stay away from Twitter altogether. It can be a great source of inspiration. But it can also be an enormous time-suck. Limit your Twitter time strictly when you’re on deadline.
  22. Get personal. That’s the point of blogging, isn’t it? But if you’re the self-effacing type—shucks, no one cares about me—you have to keep reminding yourself of this obvious truism.
  23. Repurpose content with great care. If you think it’s easier than writing original blog content, you’re doing something wrong. Your blog is a different context and audience than whatever you originally wrote for. If you don’t adapt your content accordingly, it will fall flat.
  24. Don’t let the mechanics of blogging waylay you. Need to finish your post? Then this is not the time to worry about SEO, to rethink your site taxonomy, or to install that plug-in you’ve been researching for the past month.
  25. Artwork is nice but not essential. Yes, adding an eye-catching drawing or photograph probably does increase the page views your post gets. But don’t make yourself crazy trying to come up with something. Ultimately, the writing must stand on its own.  And if you can’t think of anything else, you can always use a photo of your cat.
  26. Split your posts up. If you tend to write long, consider whether you might better serve time-challenged readers by spreading it out in smaller chunks over two or three days.
  27. At a loss for words? Take a walk. If it worked for Dickens, why not you?
  28. When all else fails, quote somebody inspiring. Thank you, Mr. Perelman.
  29. Always Be Composing. If you’re serious about your writing, you should be thinking about it all the time. In everything you do throughout the day, you should be wondering, “Say, could I write about this?”
  30. If you’re going to write a numbers post, stick to single digits. Five lessons would have been so much easier.

-30-

Personal vs. Corporate: Six New-Media Principles, No. 3

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In last Wednesday’s post, I described how new media make the reader an equal partner in journalism, able to talk back to, as well as compete with, the journalist. The same dynamic similarly changes the journalist’s relation to his or her employer. Journalists no longer need a traditional publisher in order to talk with readers.

Formerly, most journalists were, to readers, little more than a name on a page. But in the social media world, they have an increasingly personal and direct connection to their readers. In the terms of commerce, journalists are becoming brands, potentially the equal of their employer’s corporate brand.

Having a personal, conversational relationship with an audience inevitably means having a distinctive voice and point of view. To traditionally trained journalists, this may seem not simply unfamiliar, but unprofessional. Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook’s journalism program manager, puts it this way:

“As journalists, we often squirm at phrases like ‘personal branding.’ But the reality is that social media, and the social Web in general, have created a shift from the institutional news brand to journalists’ personal brands . . . [and] a consumption environment that encourages conversation as much as content, and the personal as much as the professional. It’s a shift from the logo to the face.”

As all forms of media become more personal, the bonds that link media professional to corporate employer become weaker. At the same time, the connections to social networks grow stronger. For journalists the implications of this trend are simple: embrace social networking, or say goodbye to your career.

Six New-Media Principles: Introduction

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This month, besides writing these time-limited daily posts, I’ve been putting the finishing touches on an e-book to be called the New-Media Survival Guide: For Journalists and Other Print-Era Refugees. If all goes well, it will be available next month. Stay tuned.

Like many posts on this blog, the e-book aims to help traditionally trained journalists, marketers, and content creators understand the ideas and values that differentiate new media from old. It doesn’t try to be the definitive word on the subject, or to offer step-by-step guidance in using new-media tools. Instead, I hope, it will provide a succinct, readable overview of the key principles driving the evolution of new media.

In the introduction to the guide, I identify and explain six key principles of new media. Both as a preview and as an invitation for your feedback, over the next week I’ll review each of those principles in a blog post.

For most people, the challenges in adapting to new media are not practical or technical, but attitudinal and intellectual. Once they understand the ideas behind new media, the hurdles, if not always the objections, largely vanish. And the first thing to understand about new versus old media is how much both have in common. Their shared concern is communication, and they involve many of the same concepts, methods, and values.

But what differentiates them is where they place their emphasis. Though not the only ones, the following six new-media preferences are to my mind the most significant:

  • Dialogue over monologue
  • Collaboration over control
  • The personal over the corporate
  • The open over the closed
  • The transparent over the opaque
  • The process over the product

For the rest of this week, I’ll share a few thoughts about how these preferences underlie new-media practices. Tomorrow I’ll discuss the first, dialogue over monologue. And in the spirit of dialogue, I hope you’ll share any thoughts you have on this topic in the comments section, both today and during the rest of this week.