Saya teruskan tips dari kang Agus Sopian tentang menulis di weblog.
--
Tomi Satryatomo
http://www.trekearth.com/members/wisat
http://satryatomo.blogspot.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Agus Sopian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 02:28:56 +0700
Subject: Re: [indobackpacker] FW: ..: tips Bagai mana cara berbagi informasi?
To: Tomi Satryatomo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Note: Dalam lalulintas informasi, seorang blogger bisa belajar dari seorang
jurnalis, dan sebaliknya. Bagaimana pokok pikiran ini berkembang, ada
baiknya kita baca dua tulisan dari Steve Outing di bawha ini. Terima
kasih. ---- Agus Sopian
The Poynter Institute
Posted, Dec. 22, 2004
What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists
Bloggers could better protect themselves if they took a few pages out
of the reporter's notebook. And here are a few things journalists can learn
from bloggers.
By Steve Outing (more by author)
More in this series
Blogging can be not only influential, but also great fun. As
Wonkette.com's Ana Marie Cox has said, "It's all chocolate cake and no
potatoes."
Of course, as blogging has grown up -- from exclusively the domain of
hobbyists typing for the world from their spare bedrooms to the addition of
top-flight bloggers making careers of it and bringing in professional
salaries -- the diet has become a bit more balanced, at least for some.
Bloggers need to eat their vegetables, too, if they expect to grow up
and win the respect of larger audiences and survive the rigors of long-term
publishing.
So, while mainstream journalists have much that they can learn from
the experiences of bloggers (as this article explains), bloggers could learn
a thing or two from traditional journalists.
Let us count the ways.
Checks & balances (a.k.a., the editor)
The principal difference between traditional journalists and the vast
majority of bloggers is: an editor. The lack of one is one of the charms of
blogging, of course. The blogger ponders, perhaps reports, analyzes, types,
and publishes. It's fast; it's creative; it's different from mainstream
journalism.
Even when there is an editor involved with a blogger, it's often after
publication.
But having an editor involved -- even if it's immediately after
hitting the Publish button, a.k.a. back-editing -- is a brilliant idea, even
for solo bloggers. An extra pair of eyes can certainly help to catch
spelling, grammar, and factual errors, but more importantly they can catch
really dangerous issues -- such as when you're about to libel someone.
With so many new people involved in blogging, most of them having no
training in journalism practices, ethics, and media law, personal legal
liability is a big deal. Bloggers publishing without the protection of an
employer to pay for their libel defense are on their own should they make a
mistake. In the years ahead, I expect to see some solo bloggers get in
trouble -- and some get driven to personal ruin when they lose libel
lawsuits. It's a wonder it hasn't happened yet.
Ah, but some bloggers say, audience members are our editors. Mistakes
are pointed out quickly and bloggers readily acknowledge and correct their
errors in plain sight. Good point, but a blog item that libels someone will
remain on the record, likely archived for a good long time, and a libelous
statement left online for even a day puts a blogger at tremendous risk. So
bloggers, take a tip from traditional journalists and find yourself some
form of editing safety net.
Reporting isn't a dirty word
Let's face it, the majority of bloggers don't do original reporting.
They comment on the work of others, or write about personal experiences. But
more and more, we are seeing bloggers who do reporting. The only real
difference between what they do and the work of professional journalists is
that most bloggers lack the credentials to gain access to sources as easily
as their journalist cousins. That's become less of a problem for top
bloggers lately. Quite a few of them got credentialed to cover the U.S.
national political conventions this year, for example.
But solid reporting can help any blogger. Learn the value of
journalistic legwork. Talk to multiple sources, and check out the
credibility of those sources. Double-source information that seems suspect.
Seek out the aid of public- and media-relations professionals for
corporations and public institutions; today, many of them are accustomed and
willing to work with bloggers as well as traditional journalists. Don't be
afraid to go to the top of an organization for comment, but also know the
value of seeking information from those much further down the organizational
ladder.
Avoid anonymous sources when you can, for just as in traditional
journalism, bloggers can lose credibility when quoting from them, unless
there's a darn good reason.
Speaking of anonymous sources, there's talk in the U.S. about the idea
that bloggers should be entitled to the same protection against revealing
sources that traditional journalists get. First Amendment lawyer Floyd
Abrams has suggested that bloggers acting as journalists should get that
protection -- but that bloggers who confine their writing to personal
opinions and reflections should not get any special protection.
The blogger's toolbox
Bloggers have much in common with journalists, of course; ergo, they
have the same rights to gather information. And that includes using
resources long available to traditional journalists to help get the right
information.
The U.S. Freedom of Information Act is a journalist's best friend, and
a blogger's, too. Anyone has the right to access public records (at least
here in the U.S.), and sometimes FOIA is the tool necessary to get the job
done. It's not just for professional journalists.
Bloggers also would be wise to frequent resources designed for
journalists. Poynter Online, publisher of this article, can be a useful site
for bloggers. And there are so many more journalistic and reporting
organizations whose resources will help bloggers produce better, more
accurate work. Poynter Online maintains lists of them here and here.
Bloggers may not get chosen to participate in in-person seminars at
the Poynter Institute or other journalistic training organizations, but
increasingly such institutions are offering online learning programs that
allow bloggers to join in -- sometimes for free. At Poynter, NewsU is the
institute's e-learning program, offering a variety of online courses.
Bloggers wishing to get better at their craft, just as with journalists,
should consider taking advantage of these opportunities.
Let's think about ethics
If there's one area about blogging that raises the most concern, it's
ethics. With most mainstream news organizations, you can pretty much be
assured that a reporter isn't taking money for writing about someone or some
company.
But guess what: That's not the case with blogging. A hot controversy
in the blogging world right now is a company that's paying bloggers a
monthly fee to write about its clients. While some of those participating
bloggers are being up front and acknowledging when they do this, there's
nothing stopping other bloggers from doing this surreptitiously.
Part of the problem is lack of any community blogging standards that
might discourage unseemly behavior. Perhaps a current effort to establish a
blogging ethics committee, as suggested by Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc.
and Nick Denton of Gawker Media, will lead to a blogging model that at least
articulates ideal blogger behavior. While still in the planning stages, such
a committee might provide member bloggers with a sort of "seal of approval"
that suggests adherence to reasonable ethical standards.
Bloggers need only to look at the ethical standards developed by
various journalism groups to get ideas on important issues to be included in
a bloggers' guide. Cyberjournalist.net's Jon Dube also wrote a Blogger's
Code of Ethics in 2003 that's worth reviewing.
Ask before you attack
Here's something you frequently see with bloggers that trained
journalists usually avoid: Making accusations or strong criticisms without
asking the target for reaction. For the sake of balance, it just makes sense
to be fair and to seek the other sides of the story.
Get to the point quickly
In journalism, one of the first things you learn is the importance of
the inverted-pyramid style of news writing. Putting the most important
information in a story up top makes much sense online, where attention spans
are short and you can't count on readers looking beyond the first sentence
or paragraph.
Write those headlines with care, too. Strong, intuitive wording is
important in getting readers to go beyond the first words. Professional
journalists have long been refining the craft of headline writing, and
bloggers should pay equal attention to it. Ignore this aspect of traditional
journalism and bloggers risk not engaging their audience.
That's not to say that bloggers can't be creative -- I'm not
suggesting that they copy the styles of mainstream journalists -- but I do
advise that bloggers take traditional news writing theory into account.
Some of those journalism resources cited above can lead you to advice
on better headline writing .
Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy
Finally, bloggers can learn a thing or two about accuracy from
traditional journalists. No, I'm certainly not implying that journalists
reporting for mainstream news organizations don't make mistakes -- they make
plenty of them. But there's an institutional ethic in professional
journalism to try to always get it right.
With blogging, it's up to the individual blogger. With no institution
or organization watching over them and guiding their behavior, we can only
hope that most bloggers adhere to a mission of accuracy and accountability.
When done without proper care and thought, blogging can be
dangerous -- not only to the blogger's reputation, but to the community at
large. Inaccurate blogging can damage personal reputations and worse, just
as can sloppy journalism. So bloggers, please make accuracy a guiding
principle, just as it is in all successful journalism.
Journalists, as members of the "Fourth Estate," have long held power.
Now bloggers are positioned to share some of that. Take care, please.
Acknowledgements
For some of the ideas in this article, I turned to several colleagues
in the U.S. and around the globe who traverse the world of traditional and
new-media journalism, including blogging. I'd like to acknowledge the
contributions and advice of Matthew Buckland, David Carlson, Amy Gahran,
Jeff Jarvis, Steve Klein, and Jade Walker.
The Poynter Institute
Posted, Dec. 20, 2004
What Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers
First of two articles on what bloggers and traditional
journalists can teach one another. Part 2: What bloggers can learn from
journalists
By Steve Outing (more by author)
More in this series
Mainstream journalists could learn a few things from bloggers.
And by doing so they just might ensure their survival in a media
world turned upside down by the Internet.
Blogging isn't just a Wild-West free-for-all of publishing with
no rules or ethical guidelines. Bloggers are making up the rules of their
emerging and increasingly powerful medium as they go, and they do indeed
have ideas to offer those practicing traditional journalism.
Bloggers and journalists do not need be the Red States vs. the
Blue States -- though in some quarters both sides have acted that way
lately. We're heading into a period, I hope, where each group takes tips
from the other to enhance their own craft.
Bloggers and mainstream journalists likely won't end up as
twins, but perhaps cordial cousins.
What's a blog?
At this point, I probably don't need to explain what a blog is
to most people. But it's worth defining the type of blogs I refer to in this
article: those written and published by independents, rather than blogs
produced by journalists under the brand name of their employers. It's not
that journalists who blog aren't bloggers; they are. Yet it's the
independents who are doing most of the innovation -- and thus have the most
to teach traditional journalists.
Are bloggers journalists? That's a loaded question, and not one
I mean to take up in this article. Suffice it to say that among the millions
of people now publishing blogs -- and among the relatively small number who
blog professionally and/or have built up huge audiences -- some act as
journalists, some do not. Some bloggers see themselves as journalists; some
do not.
No-restraint journalism
If there's a leading complaint that traditional journalists
often make about bloggers, it's this: Some bloggers are too quick to publish
anything that falls into their laps -- without bothering to vet the material
to determine if it's accurate, or to consider the consequences of publishing
it. In some cases, such "careless" publishing can have far-reaching results.
Even bloggers, the traditionalists say, have a responsibility to the public
not to trade in unsubstantiated and possibly dangerous rumors.
The poster child for just-about-anything-goes is Ana Marie Cox,
otherwise known as Wonkette, who does a popular daily news and gossip blog
covering the Washington, D.C., political scene. Cox insists she's not acting
as a "journalist" with Wonkette, though she is a journalist by background.
On November 2, Cox was one of the bloggers who received leaked
early results from exit polls in the U.S. presidential election -- the ones
that led many to believe early in the day that John Kerry was on his way to
victory. Cox's popularity has left her with a big group of sources -- people
who feed her interesting tidbits and sometimes leaked material. People with
access to exit-poll numbers sent her leaked numbers; she posted them
quickly, with cautionary words to the effect of, "don't take this too
seriously."
Cox acknowledged during an interview that she didn't think much
about the ethics of it all that day, though she's well aware of the
controversy surrounding exit polls affecting voting in states where the
polls haven't yet closed. "Exit polls are like crack," she quips, and just
like curbing drug use, no one is likely to stop early publication of them by
bloggers as long as there are people with access willing to leak the
results.
"It's impossible to maintain privileged information" in an
environment where anyone can instantly publish leaked information to a
potential worldwide audience on the Web, she says.
But there's more to Wonkette's method than "I publish anything
because I can." Cox points out how she also posted pre-election reports sent
to her of rumors that presidential candidate John Kerry had an affair with a
young woman. "I posted the Kerry affair stuff and said it's stupid," she
says. (The affair rumor turned out to go nowhere.)
Cox's point of view reflects a libertarian notion that it's fine
in a democratic society for people to receive most any information. This
line of thinking suggests that the publisher's responsibility lies in being
clear about what's been confirmed and what hasn't been, acknowledging that
the information, depending on circumstances, could be accurate or could be
groundless. Let readers decide for themselves whether it's useful
information, in other words, but be transparent in explaining where you got
it and how much of it you've confirmed. Respect the intelligence of the
audience, this argument goes, and don't try to play nanny by deciding what
you will and will not publish without audience input.
The key word in the paragraph above is "transparency." Many
bloggers feel that it's OK to publish just about anything if they make it
clear where it came from, what they know about it, and that it may or may
not be accurate.
The news, faster
Could such an approach be taken by mainstream news
organizations? Let me suggest that current trends are pushing them toward a
new way of doing journalism that is a bit more blog-like.
The Internet, of course, has speeded up the news publishing
cycle. No longer is it easy for a news organization to sit on a big story
and publish it at a set time, when all the dust has settled. (Think of how
the Monica Lewinsky story played out -- when blogger Matt Drudge published
leaked reports of a Bill Clinton affair that Newsweek was investigating but
wasn't ready to make public -- to understand what I mean.)
"Newspaper people (especially) still have the mindset of putting
out the edition and then they're done with it," complains Glenn Reynolds, a
law professor best known as the blogger behind Instapundit, one of the most
popular blogs on the Internet today.
In an interview, Reynolds explained that the way he approaches
information that comes his way is profoundly different than how a
traditional journalist would. For instance, he says, if the infamous
"Rathergate" documents about George W. Bush's military record ended up in
the hands of a blogger like him rather than CBS News, the approach likely
would have been to publish them immediately. Rather than find an expert or
two to review the documents, a blogger would recognize that among members of
his audience would be people capable of doing credible analysis. Imagine the
ensuing conversation as the story started in one blog, quickly spread to
others, and people far and wide started discussing the credibility of the
documents.
It's not hard to imagine a different outcome than what actually
happened: CBS News got dragged through the mud when it became obvious that
the Bush documents were faked and CBS messed up.
Yes, it is hard to imagine the New York Times or Washington Post
taking this approach, I admit. Yet it might make sense in some cases.
Imagine, say, the coverage of Watergate being treated in part
this way. Rather than Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward being the sole
storytellers, blog-influenced journalism would have had them in part leading
a conversation about the scandal -- and probably turning up new sources in
the process. What if Woodward and Bernstein had accompanied their Watergate
investigative pieces with a blog that facilitated public conversation and
brought in tips from government insiders? I suspect that a Watergate
investigation in the blog era would have come to a conclusion faster.
News is a conversation
"Big media has to learn to be more honest," says Jeff Jarvis, a
media executive who moonlights as a blogger, "that is, to level with its
public, to reveal its prejudices, and process as citizen journalists
(bloggers) do."
The popularity of bloggers is leading to a new way of thinking
about news. Jarvis said in an e-mail interview that the most profound thing
he learned when he started blogging is this: News is a conversation, not
just a lecture. The story doesn't end when it's published, but rather just
gets started as the public begins to do its part -- discussing the story,
adding to it, and correcting it.
Jarvis is by day president of Advance Internet, the new-media
arm of Advance Communications; by night he is the popular independent
blogger behind BuzzMachine. As a 50-something media executive with a lengthy
print-journalism background (including as a reviewer for TV Guide) and a
new-found enthusiasm for blogging, he's well suited to advise the profession
on striking a middle ground between traditional journalism and blogging.
"The news isn't done when we print it," he says. "That's when
the public can add questions, corrections, perspective. That will improve
news. And it also will change our relationship with the public."
Bloggers have adopted this credo, and mainstream news
organizations would be well advised to do so, too, at least to some extent.
"We have owned the printing press for centuries; now the people
have the power of the press" through blogs, Jarvis says. "They are speaking
and it's our turn to listen and engage them in conversation."
To do that represents a profound shift in the type of journalism
practiced in the U.S. and most Western countries with a free press. Engaging
the public at the level Jarvis suggests would likely mean inviting readers
to contribute to the end product, either in the form of published reaction
to articles written by professional journalists or by reader-produced
content in such forms as blogs or "citizen journalism" entries.
Personality journalism
Most blogs are highly personal, usually reflecting their
authors' personalities. If you have favorite bloggers, you probably know
their political views and even a fair bit about their personal lives.
With the exception of columnists, you probably know next to
nothing about a newspaper's staff journalists. Reporters keep their opinions
to themselves, for the most part, to comply with newsroom policy and
longstanding journalistic convention.
But what if reporters were allowed to reveal more about
themselves? Would the journalistic world end? Many bloggers doubt it;
indeed, the refusal of mainstream news organizations to allow their
journalists to reveal their opinions and personal perspective is a leading
criticism leveled at news companies by bloggers.
Perhaps Slate, the successful Microsoft-owned webzine (and not a
blog), suggests a coming tidal shift. Before this last U.S. election, Slate
announced that 45 of its 49 editorial employees planned to vote for John
Kerry. Can you imagine the New York Times announcing a breakdown of how its
employees planned to vote? That would represent quite a departure from the
traditional candidate endorsements the paper publishes, without bylines, on
its editorial page.
Some bloggers would say that kind of opening up is a good idea,
and maybe mainstream news organizations would be smart to acknowledge the
obvious -- that their staffs of professional journalists do have opinions.
How surprising was it that Slate's staff leaned heavily to Kerry? Would it
surprise anyone, say, if Fox News employees overwhelmingly supported
President Bush? As I said, this probably wouldn't cause the media world to
collapse.
Indeed, you can view this loosening of the grip on editorial
employees' personal lives as a way to better connect journalist and
reader -- to forge a stronger relationship between them and in theory
support greater loyalty by readers.
'We were wrong'
One significant difference between mainstream journalism and
blogging is the way each handles its mistakes. On this one, the bloggers
seem to have an edge.
Although the working styles of bloggers varies considerably,
some of today's leading bloggers take a similar approach to mistakes: They
prominently post corrections to errors, publishing them quickly. Reynolds
typically posts a correction of an earlier item as a new item at the top of
the blog if the item in error has scrolled down the page, so his readers are
sure to see it.
And because most bloggers embrace interactivity with their
audiences, they hear about it when a mistake is made (via the comments areas
on their own blogs, and from other bloggers noting and publicizing the error
if it's significant) -- and so do all the other readers.
Contrast that with how the typical old-media news organization
handles mistakes. It's a rare day when a TV news program announces a mistake
in the previous day's coverage; newspaper corrections typically are
relegated to an inside page in a special corrections area, unseen by many
readers.
Perhaps bloggers rank higher when it comes to corrections
because they are in more direct touch with their readers. When a blogger
makes a mistake, his or her readers make it known; there can be no ignoring
it. As mainstream news organizations evolve to have more direct interaction
with their readers and viewers, they'll have to change how they acknowledge
and handle mistakes.
A different reporting style
While reporting styles among bloggers of course vary wildly, you
do often see (among those bloggers who do reporting, not just commentary) a
different approach than what's typical in mainstream reporting. After all,
many bloggers are not journalists and have not had training in traditional
reporting techniques. Perhaps there's something to be learned from this
fresh perspective on reporting.
In covering a technical story, you sometimes see bloggers go far
down the corporate ladder; perhaps it's partly not having the access to or
experience at reaching people at the top for comment. The conventional
journalist will seek out company executives or go through the PR department.
But bloggers sometimes get their information from people further inside an
organization -- the programmers. It makes for a different type of
storytelling, as new and different voices are heard.
Again, it leads back to the theme that bloggers often get closer
to the people than do mainstream journalists.
Of course, in many instances it's the people "down the corporate
ladder" doing the blogging themselves. Take, for example, the blog Call
Centre Confidential, written by the anonymous team leader of an unidentified
phone marketing call center.
Other lessons
What else can mainstream journalists learn from bloggers?
Perhaps .
a.. That publishing unpolished thoughts (written by smart
people) can be valuable -- that in the lightning-fast Internet era,
unrefined commentary and analysis has a place. And the polishing process
sometimes takes place after the Publish button has been pushed -- as the
audience adds its knowledge and perspective to keep a story alive well past
the point when it is first published.
b.. That fast-to-publish content like that on blogs doesn't
have to go through a rigorous editing process -- that there's value in the
speed of blogging that can be applied to mainstream journalism. (If that
sounds scary to editors, remember than when reporters go on live radio and
TV programs, there's no editing there either. It's a matter of trust in the
journalist to be given such freedom and responsibility.)
Meeting of the media
From an old-media perspective, the ideas presented above may
sound unreasonable. Indeed, presented in 1990, they would have seemed
outlandish. Yet in today's world, they represent possibilities that
traditional news organizations should be considering.
I'm not suggesting that newspapers and TV news operations mimic
blogs, only that they experiment with some of the ideas that blogs present.
Choire Sicha, editorial director of Gawker Media, one of the
leading publishers of independent blogs (including Wonkette), said in an
e-mail interview of the difference between mainstream journalists and blogs:
"I think there's really not that much to distinguish between journalists and
bloggers except for a formalized edit process before print.
"Nearly all journalists traffic privately in gossip, anonymous
sources, and thinly veiled juicy items -- they just don't usually get to
throw those things into print, and so they IM these tidbits to us bloggers,"
he says. "Bloggers are really just the id of the journalism world."
Put another way, by Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox, "On blogs, it's
all chocolate cake and no potatoes."
And if you really want to get a sense of how blogs and
mainstream journalists are coming together, Sicha offers this: "Here's a
little peek behind the curtain over here at Gawker Media HQ: I just had a
two-hour meeting with a blogger who edits one of our sites. We discussed new
staffing assignments and rotations, some feature ideas, and six-month goals.
Sound familiar, print people? Sound boring, bloggers?"
With much in common as well as many differences, bloggers and
mainstream journalists should be looking to one another for ideas on how to
navigate our newly revised media world.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly
identified the blog Call Centre Confidential.
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Give the gift of life to a sick child.
Support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's 'Thanks & Giving.'
http://us.click.yahoo.com/5iY7fA/6WnJAA/Y3ZIAA/yppolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
Indonesian Backpacker Communities
visit our website at www.indobackpacker.com
"No Spamming or forwarding unrelated messages, you will be banned immediately"
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indobackpacker/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
