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by Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros

June 6, 2002 • Today's weblog

Thinkin', linkin' and not yet: Doc Searls quotes Eric Raymond (Armed and Dangerous), in Who's a warblogger? Blogotypology considered: "The blogotypological distinction that makes the most sense to me is 'thinker' vs. 'linker'. I know which of those camps I'm in. I'm a thinker, an essayist. I'd rather write about my original thinking than reflect or index other peoples' words."

Thinker vs. linker, warblogger vs. tech blogger. Duality may rule but it doesn't encompass all that this emerging form can be. (Raymond also cites diarists as a third blogging form, but let's leave that. As a New Englander, I would rather run down the street naked than spill my guts in print.)

In the blogger vs. journalists debate, bloggers often claim common ground with editorial writers, they who sit upstairs, just outside the publisher's office, reacting to and reflecting on the news gathered and published by we reporters and editors down here in the newsroom. Their job is to influence the debate, but, as Kitty Graham once said, our job is to set the agenda.

Many of us who left the "hard news" desks for Features did so because a steady diet of disasters, politics and crime drains the soul. "They're really all about covering the power structure," columnist Paul Andrews wrote recently in his blog. In Features, the reader is always on our minds -- How will this development in music, in technology, in arts funding affect our lives? How can we explain this to readers coming cold to it? The culture, in the broadest sense of the word, is what we flog.

This blog is not my official job here, it's done in the wee hours, or between interruptions when deadline isn't looming; (I can write this now because I came in an hour early today.) So I'm usually a linker when I have no time, a wire editor working the Web. I'm a thinker when I have a few minutes to add my take to the news, a "reported column." (There are the beginnings of dozens of think pieces in little textfiles on computers here and at home.)

But I would rather cover the forest and the trees: I'd like to use my access -- because I work for a major news organization, even the White House will call me back -- to ask those far-reaching questions on behalf of readers, and report the answers here, with plenty of context and background links. For this, there has never been enough time yet, but it's what I want eventually to add to this mix.

Got a name for that?
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