I, Reporter

Whither Wales?

There's been a good discussion going on at Poynter Institute's E-Media Tidbits group blog about a less than enthusiastic assessment of citizen journalism's prospects from a surprising source. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, probably the premier example of webifying the wisdom of the masses, suggested at a Columbia J-School event I attended that in terms of straight reporting of the deep kind, we shouldn't expect citJers to make their mark. Take a look at that original posting and the comments from others, or share your thoughts with us below.

Objectivity...or Independence?

My two cents on the critically important question of "objectivity." It's been tying journalists into knots for years. But as as I understand it, for most of journalism's history in this country, it was a partisan craft that made no particular effort at objectivity (the same holds true to this day for much journalism around the world). Objectivity is a fairly recent construct, and a pretty artificial one at that, given the thoroughly subjective nature of the human experience. But, that doesn't mean the idea hasn't been extraordinarily useful. ...