Peter Rukavina is not a journalist but other bloggers are

Photo credit: Paulino Figueirido

Randy MacDonald weighs into the discussion on “bloggers and journalism” referring to the controversy about NJN Network’s expulsion from the PEI Legislature.

Bloggers may or may not be journalists but then journalists aren’t journalists either. Reprinting press releases on a regular basis is called public relations.

MacDonald finds Rukavina’s admission that Ruk is not a journalist more of a personal admission than a state of the craft. In I am not a journalist, Rukavina makes the interesting although unconvincing statement

“The words I write in this space I write for myself alone, without consideration for their consumption. I write about things that happen to me, things that interest me, things that happen in my neighborhood and things that happen in the world.”

If that were total true, publication on the Internet would be an unnecessary step. Ruk has the same compulsion of all writers: he seeks an audience. When Ruk writes a blog or Tweets about something in his world, he could merely write it down and hit save. It is the publishing that belies his denial of the reader.

Most writers seek an audience. The ego drives one to write and publish, somewhere perhaps anywhere.

The same set of emotions is causing writers to quit newspapers that establish pay walls that restrict public readership.

Apart from that, MacDonald has a reasoned take on the whole affair that is worth reading.

I agree that there are serious differences between blogging taken as a whole and journalism taken as a whole, a relative lack of editing on blogging’s part, say, greater spontaneity, greater interactivity. Those are averages, however. Those are not representative of the entire enterprise of blogging, nor are they representative of the entire enterprise of journalism. Blogging can very well be a useful form of journalism because of its more personal and individualistic scale, ferreting out stories that larger and perhaps less nimble journalistic enterprises might not get. Again, bloggers can transition to journalism, just as journalists can transition to blogging, just as people can fulfill the expectations of both activities without undue stress. Bloggers, in turn, depend heavily on traditional media for their information, whether that information is reproduced verbatim or made the subject of commentary.

The argument that journalists who publish on blogs are different than journalists who publish on paper is archaic and moot. All journalists want to be published.

As Stephen Engelberg points out in Jumping the Gunman, traditional newspaper journalists will sacrifice the story and context for the big break that moves them onto page 2 or even page 1 of the paper.

I eschew labels although I am a journalist. Labels are for those who want to maintain the status quo which is rarely our goal at NJN Network.

The argument is so lame. Did Hartford Courant award-winning journalist George stop being a journalist when he quit the Courant and set up Connecticut Watchdog ?

Did a lack of press passes make Iran’s citizen journalists any less valid in the process of reporting the political repression in their country?

I was a journalist in 1965. The reason I am practicing on the internet is not for money but to tell the stories our local journalists won’t report.  The mainstream media has become embedded with people who want to maintain the status quo – government, the bureaucracy, business and other self-interest groups.  Now if they would only do the job for which they are being paid.