Thursday, December 02, 2004

In praise of mainstream media


As one of the few blogs that does original reporting Technoflak appreciates the work involved in providing a simple account of a meeting, never mind getting it done on deadline.

Everyday broadcasts, newspapers, magazines and web sites offer us a cornucopia of news stories gathered by an army of reporters. This is very expensive. If I were an editor I would not embed links in my online edition except in rare cases. That is what advertising is for; if a newsmaker wants a link, let them pay for it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Including links to sites you are writing about is good journalism. If you are going to take the time to say, for example, whatsnextblog.com, which is how many traditional media describe web sites, what's the big deal about making it a http://www.whatsnextblog.com and making the link live.

You are already writing an article about it. The "free advertising" is already granted. But your information is incomplete until you include a link.

I say it is laziness, not greed that dictates this practice.
B.L. Ochman

Alice said...

I take your point, and I notice the Reuters includes web links in its stories. But I don't think it is greedy for news organizations to try to get advertising. Nor do I think it is a matter of laziness, after all the reporting is a separate operation for those actually maintaining the web site, just as the print operation is separate from the reporting.