I hope you are not a journalist…

An Italian blog recently referenced a twitterquake experience I shared with Jon Bounds and Joanna Geary (and before you reach for the irritating cliche yes the earth did move for all 3 of us – which is why we were blogging at 2am – partly to reassure each other that we were not mad and the earth had just moved).

I left a thank you on the Italian blog (only polite) to which the response included a comment which  translated along the lines of “I hope you are not a journalist..”

Well I am.

I was trained as a journalist and paid as one for the best part of 20 years. I have worked with some of the most intelligent, passionate and honest people I could hope to share office, head and heart space with. In almost every piece of work I do I use story telling skills and in doing that I try to tell people things that are new(s) to them. I remain a member of the NUJ.

Just because the publishing business model is becoming confused it does not mean that journalism is dead. I admire journalists and journalism. I dislike liars, dissemblers and self publicising ego maniacs – whether they are working journalists or not. If your instinct and skill is to tell people the truth quickly and honestly then you are my sort of journalist – whether you are paid or not.

6 comments

  1. And you are my sort of blogger 🙂

    To tell the truth can be a revolutionary act. I’m sure someone [?] once said that “truth is always subversive”.

  2. Frenz says:

    Hi Nick, you are right, but I think there could be some misunderstanding, I want to clear it to you.
    I don’t know how much the web can help the information system based on newspapers in your contry. In Italy we are having some problems about this.

    Lots of editors and journalist don’t use internet in a constructive way.
    Internet always is used for negative’s news, the crime news becomes attractive if it is seasoned with some reference to the web, like video on youtube.
    In many cases there is a computer illiteracy of journalists.

    Example: In a famous program on the public channel with a notable journalist, they talked about:
    – The young discomfort is associated with internet.
    – Blogs are something that do only a crazy kid.
    – Blogs are written by children suffering from multiple personality problems.
    – Blogs and sexual perversions are closely linked.
    – They linked blog with only a desire of protagonism
    – One from the public, for information discredit quoted from a guest said: “I don’t know where she has found this news, it’s false. Probably she has found on internet…”

    This is the video of that program:
    http://tinyurl.com/2qm3c6

    There are many young people who want to be a journalist, that can understand how is important internet nowaday. Unfortunately they find a lot of barriers for becoming a registered journalist: takes a long time, many many years with very low wages and lots of difficulties.

    I’m convinced that another problem is the business strategy that still have the newspapers.

    They use the readers as a commodity for the advertising market, rather than a “Prosumer”.
    This triggers a bad circle where quality and professionalism expire considerably.

    I hope you can understanding my view that it’s not against all the journalist but only against an internet illiteracy.
    My compliments for your blog and for your work.(not only polite)

  3. Nick Booth says:

    Thank you Renz for explaining that. It sounds like mainstream publishing trying to discredit the force that is disrupting their business. It would be wiser for them to adapt and embrace. You might get a lot of pleasure from reading another Birmingham blogger Paul Bradshaw – he’s a specialist on online journalism. You can find him here:

    http://onlinejournalismblog.com/

Comments are closed.