When you take something online, you rely on technology, but the point should never be the technology itself. In other words, although online journalism relies on technology, it is not ABOUT technology. Technology is never more than a means to an end.
George Orwell, who is considered to be one of the greatest essayists in the history of the English language, once said that great writing was like providing your reader with a window to look through.
Orwell was not a journalist and never seriously claimed that he was, but I think we should consider that one of the main jobs of the journalist, one of the main reasons for journalism even, is to provide a similar window for our readers and listeners.
If we presumptuously extend Orwell’s metaphor for one moment, on one side of the window is the reader/listerener/viewer, and on the other are the ideas or ‘content’ (see earlier posts) that are being communicated. When you learn to take your journalism into a new space, for example online, you are moving to a new kind of window, but the idea is always the same.
The window itself is unimportant, it is entirely what we see through it that is important.
Those individuals who obsess about the glass, the fittings, or the frame of the window, while their skills are at first glance invaluable, entirely miss or are oblivious to the point of the whole exercise.
When learning to take journalism online, we must remain focussed on providing the window. We must take the technology that provides us with a new type of window entirely in our stride, because it simply is not difficult enough to think of doing otherwise.
In fact, we should think about this every time we use a computer for anything, not just for journalism.
(And that’s enough about windows.)
20 Feb 09 11:02 am
Not sure why you think Orwell was not a journalist…
20 Feb 09 8:24 pm
Chapter 34, Down and out in Paris and London, George Orwell, 1933:
“When we registered I gave my trade as ‘journalist’. It was truer than ‘painter’, for I had sometimes earned money from newspaper articles, but it was a silly thing to say, being bound to lead to questions.”
…
“Which of you is Blank?’ (I forget what name I had given.)
‘Me, sir.’
‘So you are a journalist?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, quaking. A few questions would betray the fact that I had been lying, which might mean prison. But the Tramp Major only looked me up and down and said:
‘Then you are a gentleman?’
‘I suppose so.’”
Chapter 9, Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell, 1938:
“…for it was the first time I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies–unless one counts journalists.”
…
“Nearly all the newspaper accounts published at the time were manufactured by journalists at a distance, and were not only inaccurate in their facts but intentionally misleading. As usual, only one side of the question has been allowed to get to the wider public.”
Sure doesn’t sound like a journalist to me…
I wonder if he would be published in today’s broadsheets? Probably not.
To call Orwell a journalist is like saying “Steven Gerrard plays darts”. Even if it’s true, it’s not what’s important about him or what made him famous. You miss the point both of my post and by the looks of it, of his work too.
Nor am I sure why you think writing about things like this should be considered to be journalism, or education for that matter. :)
25 Feb 09 3:40 pm
Thanks, Marcus.
I was thinking more of Orwell having been a BBC producer, reported for The Observer and Manchester Evening News, been literary editor of Tribune, and written for the Evening Standard.
Thanks for the link. My blog is *about* journalism, teaching & learning etc (rather than itself being journalism). That post notes a quirk about some newspapers’ online systems, as detailed by a columnist — and the subject of an initially inaccurate report by The Guardian’s Media Monkey.
25 Feb 09 7:54 pm
Hi again Jonathan,
Yes, you’re absolutely right about Orwell having those various jobs. To the letter he was undoubtedly a journalist at certain points in his life.
However, as somebody who is primarily remembered for his essays, nonfiction books and novels – none of which are qualifying attributes of a journalist – we would be misremembering him if we think of him primarily as a journalist. He also made his feelings clear on journalists on many occasions, some of which I have retrieved above.
In any case, none of this really has anything to do with my post. Whether he was a journalist or not does not affect the point that is being made. If you’d prefer I could edit the post to remove that sentence…
12 Jan 10 8:33 pm
Marcus,
Just what I was looking for. (And while Orwell was a great inspiration to me before I became a journalist, I don’t want to get side-tracked).
Okay, the real problem for many very experienced journalists is that they want to get on and write/investigate/expose/etc but
… while ‘Technology is never more than a means to an end’ … it can create the conditions for a closed, barred, and bolted window to those who are crossing-over.
If I had the time to do the MA/MSc I would, but I don’t. And the technology (including, perhaps more than anything, the computer-speak) severely limits the ability to create that window.
While I would never suggest that what we have created is a form of unknowing-censorship (a la Orwell), one of the corollaries of ‘technology’ is a sidelining of potentially bloody good journalism.
I’ve posted elsewhere on this site the question ‘what CMS would you suggest to create an online newspaper’ being planned by two very experienced journalists (newspapers, radio, tv at a national level). Perhaps the question here is “what suggestions do you have for overcoming the gap between extensive experience journalistically, and non-extensive experience technologically?”