Michael Cooke is wrong about bloggers
Jun 19, 2010 in Media, On-line
There was a time in media when professional journalists hated bloggers. They hated their guts and thought they were little more than badly-adjusted, shut-ins who sat around at home and wrote ill-informed (sometimes patently wrong) rants. I thought that time was behind us. Obviously, I was wrong.
Michael Cooke, editor-in-chief, of the Toronto Star accepted an award recently at the Canadian Journalism Foundation and trumpeted the investigative work done by his journalists. Cooke also took the time to slam bloggers and citizen journalism.
“Is journalism one hundred unpaid bloggers all talking and yattering at once, or a city filled with amateur citizen journalists uncoordinated in all their efforts? Those bloggers and citizen reporters are as close to real reporters as karaoke is to Frank Sinatra live and in person.”
He quickly followed that up with a conciliatory comment about how there’s room for both “serious” investigative journalism and yattering bloggers. It was like splashing cold water in someone’s face and then following it up with a handshake and an introduction. You’re not going to get a warm reception.
Cooke isn’t just wrong about this, he’s plain insulting. I wonder how the citizen bloggers who contribute to the Star’s Your City, My City blog feel about Cooke’s remarks? Or what about the bloggers who have their uncoordinated work rewritten by Star staffers feel about this?
Sure, many, many bloggers aren’t worth a second glance but a few show the tenacity, smarts and journalistic moxie that any editor or professional journalist would find enviable.
It’s also patently unfair to compare a Toronto Star journalist, with the resources of Canada’s largest paper behind them, and a nice salary to allow them to work full-time, to a blogger, who more often than not is doing this for exposure, for fun or just for the sheer passion of it. They often have few resources to work with, little or no training and most certainly don’t have the luxury of pursuing their work full-time. It would be like an NBA star badmouthing the guys who play 3-on-3 at their local gym. It’s in bad form.
The journalism ecosystem has changed and bloggers are a legitimate and crucial part of it. A better thing to do would be to figure out how to interact with bloggers and citizen journalists. What Cooke and other recalcitrant traditional journalists should do is try to figure out why, despite the scant rewards and obstacles, so many do take that microphone in their hands and try to do their best Frank Sinatra.