Tag Archives: news

Welcome to journalism-free journalism

Encouraged to embrace social media, are real journalists now paying too high a price for the convenience of “information everywhere all the time”? Serious professional journalists have long been urged to integrate social media into their work. It’s a great tool for digging into events and harvesting opinions that might otherwise be “mediated out” by gatekeepers who don’t want inconvenient truths exposed. But at what cost? Read More

One person’s meat is another’s poison

After every mass killing, blogs and forums brim with accusations how the media may have prompted the event. We respond that we’re only doing our job, but sometimes we should consider how much we are to blame, if not for whipping up hatred then at least for aiding and abetting those who do. It’s one of the great questions of journalism: “How responsible are we, as journalists, for the negative effects of things we report?” Read More

That was the year that wasn’t

We are now in the third decade of the 21st Century, so what has happened in the last 10 years? Certainly, had it not been for WikiLeaks, 2010 itself might have gone down as another forgettable year for media in Australia and around the world, few examples of great journalism, no breathtaking, game-changing technical innovations, not even any great “end-of-an-era” events at which we could pause and take stock. Read More