I stumbled across this today and thought it was worth sharing. When journalists begin co-opting the language of prostitution can anyone really be faulted for calling them "whores".
According to the conference blurb, last week, at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan, a collection of smart thinkers convened to discuss "A Way Forward: Solving the Challenges of the News Frontier."
The conference including some snappy panel sessions you can check out via the link, but what really got me going was the following, emphasis mine:
At the Carnegie/Paley conference’s session on entrepreneurial journalism just now, Jeff Jarvis asked his panelists to engage in a ‘lightning round,’ briefly answering the same question. That question: What is the one skill or approach that journalists need to have, and develop, right now?
Here’s what they answered:
Phil Balboni, GlobalPost: "Prepare yourself to be a small businessman or businesswoman"; build—and market—your individual brand. Journalists need to have "hustle and entrepreneurship" about themselves.
John Harris, Politico: "Find your distinctive value"—what skill or interest or talent distinguishes you from everyone else—"and learn how to market that."
Rafat Ali, ContentNext: Develop "subject matter expertise"—and "passion" for that subject matter.
John Thornton, Texas Tribune: Hustle. "Whether it’s networks or whatever...what you do uniquely well, what you really know, you have to hone." But: "you’re going to have to be pretty promiscuous about how you monetize it."
Geneva Overholser, USC Annenberg: Have "the expectation that you’ll be a collaborator"—and the mindset that individual journalists are part of a broader network and ecosystem. Also: have an "openness to new methods, new platforms, new technologies": journalists need to be promiscuous not just about marketing and monetizing their work, but about how they produce that work in the first place.
This is what today's journalists are being told? Be an entrepreneur... hustle your brand... be promiscuous... Are these people serious? I mean, where is the panel session on "How to be your own pimp"?
Contrast that with the Journalist's Creed, written a century ago by Walter Williams of the University of Missouri.
...I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of a lesser service than the public service is betrayal of this trust...
I believe that a journalist should write only what he holds in his heart to be true...
I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible...
I believe that the journalism which succeeds best -- and best deserves success -- is stoutly independent, unmoved by pride of opinion or greed of power, constructive, tolerant but never careless, self-controlled, patient, always respectful of its readers but always unafraid, is quickly indignant at injustice; is unswayed by the appeal of privilege or the clamor of the mob; is a journalism of humanity, of and for today's world.
The apocalypse is indeed upon us.
Peace.