When it comes to newspapers, my rose-colored glasses are firmly in place.
Photo: Heidi Fedak
Late at night, alone in my dining room, I cyber spy.
Awash in the glow of my HP laptop, I am the silent third wheel at Alicia and Andy's Saturday dinner, the quiet co-pilot during Laurie's LA commute, the quirky lurker at BlufftonToday.
These people have become my friends, confidants and informers. None of them (save for the reporter-bloggers on Bluffton Today) are trained journalists. And still, I read their words nearly every day. I don't care about their writing mistakes or their reporting mishaps. I care about what they have to say.
Philip Meyer, a UNC professor and author of "The Vanishing Newspaper," suggests that newspapers, as we know them, will cease to exist in 2043. In order to survive, he says, journalists must become more professional. With all due respect to Meyer, I think we should become less so.
Does Meyer really think that people are turning to YouTube, the Daily Kos, Little Green Footballs because they're more professional than we are? Puhleeze. They do it because those people have mastered the art of making connections. Objectivity? Yeah, right.
Yes, the print posse is, perhaps, a bit slow on the uptake. We write every day, but for far too long, we failed to see the writing on the wall. We need to change. We need to toss the idea of objectivity and become friendly with our readers.
I realized that last week when fellow student Daniel Berk said that a Web site he enjoyed had bad writing but good content. Until that moment, I didn't think it was possible for that combination to exist: good writing = good content, right? WRONG!
Content (not writing, not professionalism) is key. I'm not saying we should give writing short shrift, but what we say is just as important as how we say it. And that means figuring out what our customers want. You can't bolster the bottom line if you ignore the wants and needs of your market.
And until we realize that our market wants a pal, not another professor or preacher, we're going to stay on Meyer's fast train to doom.
Could we maybe let a professor comment, even though we don't need another one? Or maybe you'd let me be your pal.
Great post! I agree with you, yet it makes my heart (and my stomach) sink when I read anyone suggest that journalists become less professional. I think we have ample examples of unprofessional behavior in the industry. I think there must be a way for journalists to become more "human" while maintaining professionalism. I think we are saying the same thing, but as all journalists know, the words we choose can make a world of difference. Let's be careful out there!
Heidi, your div tag was messed up. You had {style="width: 240px} (braces are editorial). I changed it to {style="width: 240px"} Please pay attention to detail. Thanks!
Yeah, I knew something was wrong, but I was writing at 5 a.m. from Fort Stewart and didn't have my notebook with me. My bad. Thanks for setting me straight.