Hans Nichols reporting on Iraq coverage here in The Hill says "The reporters that are there are all huddled in a hotel. They are not getting out and reporting,” he told The Hill.

This is a larger example of what I think is going on here in Philadelphia. As Zogby alludes to here , reporters are too lazy to get the story right or, indeed, to get the right story. Instead of spending time researching and being journalists, reporters are merely reporting, not journaling. Furthermore, often what they are reporting is secondhand information.

Because a journalist's story is often the only exposure to an event the public gets, a journalist's account of that event should be firsthand, not a Jason Blair-like accounting, written while sipping cocktails in a bar.

Work!!!

Whatever happened to good old fashioned work?

This is just a great discussion.

I was just in Syracuse at my alma mater celebrating the 100th anniversary of our campus newspaper, The Daily Orange. Our keynote speaker, Robert Shogan, is an SU grad and former managing editor of the paper (1951!!!) and has covered seven presidential elections, worked at the WSJ, Washington Post and Newsweek among many others. His point was the same as yours - reporters are acting in "pools" often times, and delivering watered down information.

There are two parts to this - a cause and effect sort of thing. On one hand, there are more outlets to feed info to, so there has to be some level of speed to the execution of news gathering, hence the pools.

At the same time, and I think what Mr. Shogan was suggesting above all else, journalists have to, themselves, think more critically. Perhaps one journalist's job is to be part of that pool - but somewhere there has to be one that is not, and is therefore not beholden to a schedule or structure.

The industry has to learn to deal with the speed and need for reach, while still going after those investigative stories - so often in bad economic times it's the investigative units that lose out, and that's hard. Somehow there has to be a balance.

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Tieing several of these treads together, the reporters in Iraq seem to only be reporting the bad news and on top of that, they are reporting it poorly and sensationalising it. The coalition in Iraq is making great progress everyday. Iraqi's are becoming more involved in their governing and law enforcement. Everyday there is cooperation between most Iraqi's and coalition troops, but all we see and hear about is the quagmire in Iraq and the death of soilders.

Right now, on the History Channel, you can watch shows detailing the covert operation that went on during the first gulf war. I can't wait for those shows about this process. All the stuff the media didn't or couldn't get, revealed. I believe it will tell a much different story than what we are being feed.

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Jason
Lynn Swann 06'

"Individualism is absent when other peoples' standards, not reality and reason, are ones primary guide."

It it interesting how the media has seemed to flip-flop regarding IRaq isn't it.

I understand the "pool" response to increased demand for content. Pooling creates a sort of economy of scale to news gathering. However, I think this pooling of resources has detrimentally resulted in a "lowest common denominator" method of news gathering and reporting.

Consequently, I think the blog phenomenon, in small part, can be attributed to people not accepting this method of news gathering. Therefore, requiring accurate news, people created a news gathering and reporting system that provides both content and fact checking.

Traditional news outlets and their journalists had better catch on and change their methods or else continue to be marginalized.

Check out http://www.hypergene.net/blog/weblog.php ... I met Chris and Shayne, who maintain this, at a conference in Austin, TX. They believe - as I do - that journalism will become a more participatory effort on the part of the community as well as journalists. We'll all be journalists to some extent someday. They just published a white paper called We the Media.

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* Name: Jennifer Kronstain
* Status on PhillyBlog.com: Co-Founder
* Job: Principal / Founder, KMG Worldwide Public Relations (http://www.kronstainmediagroup.com)
* Connect with Jennifer / KMG. Here's how: http://www.jenniferkronstain.com/contact.htm