Jan. 13th, 2012

dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
Okay. I've occasionally been caught doing some of the work in public over the last couple of decades in between other jobs.

(Specifically, I did courtroom art for CBC TV's Ottawa station on an irregular basis for a few years. Also, op-ed cartoons on occasion for the Algonquin Times during my second term as a full-time student at the paper's host college. Also, for local weekly newspapers. And you know about my writing contributions to [livejournal.com profile] spacing_ottawa.)

So perhaps I'm expected to have at least a semi-informed opinion on this issue. Probably a bit of bias as well in my comments on the subject.

The other day, one of the New York Times' editorial people was blogging in public as well, and happened to ask one of those questions that seemed to have already been answered on several other occasions over the centuries by predecessors with access to different mixes of technological tools. Some of you have mentioned it in passing or in detail, and I noticed that.

Arthur Brisbane phrased the question in this particular way, though: Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?

(Please note well that Mr. Brisbane offered some additional clarification shortly afterwards.)

I am inclined to think that fact-checking of subjects' and interviewees' claims is very much a part of Doing the Work of being a reporter or journalist. Or even a columnist, the point of whose soap-box is to give you their informed opinion.

And [livejournal.com profile] mariness pointed out in passing that fact-checking even happens as a matter of routine amongst fiction writers.

(Others amongst you reading this will, I trust, disabuse us both of this notion if she's wrong?)

I could in fact stand to be more vigilant myself about this discipline. Especially since I still hope to make any part of an honest living from my writing, be it in fact or fiction.

I am not inclined to see the journalist/reporter as a dying or doomed breed, myself. Like Brooke Gladstone - I urge you to look closely at her graphic documentary/opinion, The Influencing Machine, illustrated by Josh Hartung, for some historical perspective on that line of work, by the by - I believe we're in for some interesting times on that front. But we're not going to see the profession die off.

Oh no. We're not going to be that unlucky. Or that stupid. Not from what I've seen in many quarters of the Internet, or the print, video, and radio media forms for that matter. Some of you here on my friendlist at Livejournal have been helping to make that fear a moot point, and to the good.

Keep doing the work.

I'll try to do the same on my end. Whether it's in my fact-writing or my fiction work.

Now...let the arguments flare up here, too. Okay?
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
1) I'm about to head out to shovel snow for the third time today in a few minutes. Which is expected, but still a pain in the shoulder joints.

2) A question triggered by something [livejournal.com profile] mariness said on her LJ today: has anyone with a legit ID recognizable by LJ been trying to post replies to my LJ postings here and been blocked? Repeatedly?
dewline: "Not Fail" (not fail)
Well, I'm still in reasonable working order after the third round of snow-shovelling. This is good.

Better still are the neighbours who rescue you from the city's snowplow-induced windrows before you finish getting dressed to go do the shovelling.

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dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

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