Thursday, April 21, 2005

A New Label: Stand Alone Journalism When journalists work outside the traditional newspaper and television newsrooms and media corporations, what do you call them? (I'm not looking for a punchline like "underfed.") "Freelancers" are usually self-employed, but sell their work to those traditional companies. "Lonely pamphleteer" is a term you sometimes hear applied to more independent journalists, from Thomas Paine to George Seldes and I.F. Stone, all of whom went directly to their readers. In the weblog world, the terms "personal journalism" and "citizen journalism" have been spreading for a couple of years (with a great boost from Dan Gillmor's book, We the Media). Now Jay Rosen at NYU is helping spread a new phrase he heard from Chris Nolan:  Stand alone journalism. She expands on it in this week's Pressthink, discussing new possibilities for reporters (with keyboard or camera) who want to make a living outside the traditional newsroom, where jobs have been declining anyway. Nolan stresses the journalist's reporting role to differentiate from the wider population of bloggers using the same software. Here's part of Nolan's personal definition: 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. See the whole article... and comment discussion at the end. 9:21:40 AM

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