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May 25, 2007
Journalism is storytelling
Journalism is storytelling: Tim Buntel dissects a shallow Computerworld article. Like Tim, I won't link to that "10 dying technologies" article, partly because of pagerank, partly because the short article is split out over five different ad-laden pages. More response at MXNA. Other wacky technews today includes: the Leo Laporte show saying "Flex costs $800" (as caught by Oliver Merk)... Washington Post knocking on Adobe Reader (that's not how you diagnose in tech support, bub)... Multidmedia Zinc responding to Apollo's change of the ecology via press release. These are all just stories -- people telling each other what they think. Back when feedback cycles were slow we could call it impartial journalism. Now, the better venues incorporate rapid feedback into their storytelling, and we realize that every speaker has a set of experiences, a set of hopes, a set of skills in storytelling that shape what they say -- and a set of stylistic differences in how fully they document their sources, and how usefully they incorporate feedback. Journalism is all just about telling stories these days, and not all stories get it right. The feedback-resistant storytellers, and the "anonymous sources" rumormongers... they gotta go, and the sooner the better.
Posted by JohnDowdell at May 25, 2007 11:01 AM