The Future: Stand Alone Journalists
Jay Rosen, who is on a roll of late, has a guest writer Chris Nolan, who writes about the concept of a “stand alone journalist”. She writes in part:
So what–exactly–is a stand alone journalist? That’s a definition that’s going to vary with the person, of course, just as no group or reporters can really agree on what makes a “journalist.” For me, the stand alone journalist succeeds in getting stories told in an honest and forthright manner without benefit of working for a larger news outlet. That doesn’t mean they’re objective or impartial; it means they’re honest about their points of view or assumptions. A stand alone journalist understands that the main job is to inform readers; and the ethics that salaried journalists have when it comes to fairness, accuracy and honesty aren’t just phrases. They’re a discipline for doing the work that needs to be done: getting your facts right, your assumptions validated, your arguments well grounded…
These writers employ the same standards that newspaper people use to crank out their stories. Their style, however, is different. It’s more personable. It shares. It doesn’t hesitate to refer to other writers, even those in competition, to make a point, raise a question, to clarify a thought or idea. This is not news writing as we know it but it is informative and useful and it counts on the reader to participate, to argue and discuss. It believes in competition and different points of view; it’s flexible and open to reader comment and criticism…
Newspaper owners decided long ago that they were going to push down costs by cutting staff. As Craiglist’s Buckmaster has pointed out, they have destroyed their product–reporting and writing. But smart writers and reporters haven’t forgotten how it’s done; and they will sell their skills to news outlets, lots and lots of news outlets, maybe even to individual readers.
