Dan Gillmor on Pasadena Now’s hiring of journalists from India: “For the money he’s paying, he could hire local bloggers. They’d do it better, with more perspectives — and have the advantage of, uh, being there.” (link)
Could we really? Would we want to? Do we want to?
I don’t think that’s quite what I want to do. I can’t go to every city council meeting. I do not watch every city council meeting online. I would like to get together a group of people to attend, watch and discuss them regularly.* I don’t want it to be my responsibility to cover every single one, though. I like journalists. I like what they do. They make what I do possible. I do not do what they do.
Check out Centinel and Publius’s comments (the Foothill Cities bloggers) on this subject, too.
If there are any local bloggers are interested in working as journalists for Pasadena Now, though, why not give James Macpherson a call?
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*I still like the idea of walking over to Wokcano afterwards. Aaron Proctor and I tossed this idea around a little bit a while ago. Anyone else interested? I think the time is right.
I commend Mr. Macpherson, and I fully understand the challenge of making a website profitable, or at the very least self-sustaining. It is my hope that he is successful in attracting advertisers with a conscience and a big wallet–but I’ll understand if he has to sell out a little bit. All the big guys have. It’s tough out there, and it’s why we have crappy news.
Pay no attention to the arrogant remarks made by sponsor driven mainstream media outlets, and not all Writer’s Guild members are hammering the keys out of fear of losing their jobs. Some are finding ways to welcome writers overseas into the litter–that way those journalists will not be exploited (if that’s the case) and unsupported or shunned by colleagues.
“Being an outsider can sometimes carry the seed for innovation.” – Dr. Sylvester James Gates, Physicist, remarked about Albert Einstein’s outsider status.
Nationally, some of us have wasted our protections during the current administration, and maybe now we will all wake up by this local example. We need a dose of barebones news with a little more objectivity and a lot less gossipy commentary–see what happens.
With all that hard news churning in the outsourced press it could make the opinion/editorial page ingredient from the local bloggers shine like the flaming sun of May (poor Catalina in the middle of the ocean).
Sincerely,
The Overly Verbose Dept. of Redundancy Dept.(probably overserved)