29 Comments

  1. Not sure how I feel about the term Journoggers, but I think most of us have observed the phenomenon. It’s sort of the difference between, say, Tony Abbott inviting the media to attend his appearance and making a joke (if that’s what we might call it?) about ironing and some random person on Twitter (or YouTube) making a tongue-in-cheek remark that is understood within the context of their community, but misconstrued (by accident or design) by outsiders.

    1. … and Kevin Rudd getting beaten up because a stripper in New York is following him on Twitter. We who are on Twitter know that lots of random followers appear. And the journo knew that but misrepresented it’s importance to the general public. There are thousands of examples which is probably why I didn’t really give ANY. Heh. Besides that was a journalist raiding social media for stories to give traditional media, not blogging.
      I should’ve included “Ridiculing popular traditional bloggers and attempting to incite arguments between them to highlight their own professionalism“. There is often a form of cyberbullying in a journoggers behaviour.
      You don’t have to like the term but Journogger was the most polite word I came up with 😛

  2. Spot on. Blogging writing style is more engaging. It’s welcoming and makes it less threatening to leave comments whereas as I wonder if the sharp tone from journoggers (me, I guess) can put people off sometimes.

    1. Yep, I worked for News for a few years. Then Fairfax in the early ’90s. I currently work with a number of news organisations worldwide.
      Some of my best friends are journalists. 😛 None of them are journoggers though a few of them blog. Certainly none of them are as aggressively anti-social media while trawling social sites as this small yet vocal minority…

  3. It’s not the term I object too (c’mon, journos, suck it up). It’s that it describes a phenomenon that doesn’t square with my experience of blogs, amateur and pro.

    As Laurel acknowledges, some journalists blog well and ethically (one can argue about what the latter really means); other don’t. The same applies to bloggers. As a journalist, I’ve been ripped off by other hacks and by bloggers. Link bait is rife across the blogosphere. So is the “exploitation” of “negative” stories (however this is defined) to draw attention and drive traffic. Some journos and bloggers build bridges, others tear them down, while most appear to do neither. Snark is everywhere, “equilibrium” nowhere.

    It’s undoubtedly true that some journalists deliberately “stand apart” from the blogosphere. That’s largely because they work for organizations that set and enforce rules about their online conduct, including their writing style and tone. It’s also, as Laurel suggests, probably a matter of institutional training, which prescribes certain ways of doing things. By contrast, independent bloggers are less subject to rules, which means they can follow their bliss, and because most come from outside the media they haven’t absorbed many of the tired journalist conventions Laurel describes.

    Everyone’s welcome to their opinion, natch, but even at the level of generalization I don’t think her typology works.

    1. Are you in Australia? Because we have a Press that is overwhelmingly negative to social media. There is not a day when “MySpace is for predators, Facebook for stalkers, Twitter for timewasters at work” article doesn’t come out. Also, in Australia, the number of linkbait blogs by non journalists is very low compared to those that are journos. In fact the only exception I can think of is an evil but funny guy from an Agency. Perhaps my vision is clouded by the fact that the only shock jock blogs that have any readership Down Under are journoggers. I suspect California may have a different skew.

      Which brings me to: I don’t necessarily want to see linkbaiters removed from the blogosphere – unless they are cyberbullying someone by writing continually harassing them, they have a place and it makes blogging easier for the rest of us. They keep the trolls off non-linkbaiter blogs. Also, they are often amusing unless they’ve stepped over some arbitrary line (depending on your value system). But why so many of them should be journos or ex-journos is a mystery. Or it’s not, if you read my post above. 😛

      Given most organisations these days are asking journalists to source stories from the ‘net, don’t necessarily attribute when they do source stuff from bloggers and Twitterers, and often have a social media negative article elsewhere in the paper, it’s just something to watch out for.

      1. I forgot an Aussie political blogger – I don’t know if he has a journo background or not. Vicious and been around for years and years.

      2. No, I’m in the states, and obviously you’d know better than I what the situation’s like in Australia. Be curious to know if there are cultural or other native factors that account for what you describe.

        There’s no question that the media has been hostile not only to new media, but historically to technology as a whole. Journalists were terrified of computerization when it hit the profession in the ’70s and ’80s (email in particular, caused concerns). They were similarly frightened of teletext, TV, radio and, presumably, pneumatic copy-tubes. With every turn in the road you heard many of the same complaints that you hear today about the Web. So this antipathy in some quarters of the media toward new media is very much in this tradition.

        The major reason, I suspect, is fear. I don’t need to tell you that people in media are terrified. As a business, it’s been in a tailspin for going on 30 years (although of course it has mostly remained profitable). From what I’ve seen on the job, much of the hostility you describe stems from anxiety–about being obsolete, redundant, unhip, unemployed. That mixes with what I’d consider more constructive concerns about whether social media is good or bad for journalism (it’s both, of course).

        But that fear isn’t isolated to journalism–it’s societal. Scroll back over the history of technology and you find profound anxiety about innovation. If you went back to the 16th century, not long after the printing press came along, you’d hear scholars complaining about the dangers of excessive reading (no kidding, you can read their commentaries saying precisely that). A few hundred years later people were saying that radio is bad for kids. Again, the general theme of the criticism is always the same–this stuff will rot your brain and contaminate society in the bargain.

        Eventually, for better and for worse, that goes away. We’re still very early in the migration to online technology. These technologies take 30-50 years to fully diffuse within society. Doesn’t mean you can’t complain about poxy journoggers, of course (and that those attitudes aren’t interesting). I just think it’s a tick on a much bigger beast.

  4. I think you might need to work on your definition of linkbait (“stories that get a lot of discussion because of their controversial nature”). Linkbait is content made to “catch” links – it’s not inherently evil or controversial (or a story, or generating discussion). A relatively current example of linkbait would be the infographic-mania that seems to be doing the rounds. Perhaps another term is in order for the type of blog you’re referring to?

    Carry on!

  5. I’m sure there’s a good explantation but your linkedin profile has no mention of your time with fairfax and news that you refer to above.
    In the context of thid piece it would be helpful to understand what you did. Are you saying you were a journalist yourself, or just that you worked in the same building
    If you were a journalist were you good at it?
    Sorry for not leaving my name by the way, despite what you say about tone, I’ve a feeling that as a jouirnalist I’ll be anything but welcome.

    Interesting debate though.

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