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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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