I’ve been too busy/lazy lately to form enough coherent thoughts to write a substantial post on a single topic, so here are more random thoughts on various items from the journosphere.

Pulitzers

The Pulitzer Prizes were handed out yesterday, and Ken Doctor has a good analysis up at Content Bridges. The point that hit home with me is this:

What’s busted about journalism is the daily business model, not the journalism. The journalism has always had its high and low points. We fete the high ones, lampoon the low ones and try to do better next week and next year.

I agree with that assessment. There are new and better means of audience interaction and content delivery that journalists should embrace, and the journalism can always be better, but I think it is important to note the disconnect between the quality of journalism and the financial fortunes of journalism companies, and more specifically, newspapers. Quality, after all, is only a factor in building an audience. Yet all the audience in the world won’t do newspapers any good if they can’t figure out a way to make money off those readers. That principle isn’t limited to newspapers. Just look at the likes of YouTube and Facebook — terrific applications that are still trying to figure out how to really make money off their huge user base.

Recognizing this disconnect doesn’t absolve journalists from the responsibility of continuously improving their work and updating their skillset, but it would paint a clearer picture of the path we need to take to fix the financial woes facing many newspapers.

Suggestions for the Rebooting the News podcast

I’ve been listening to the weekly podcasts by Jay Rosen and Dave Winer on the future of journalism, and for the most part it’s pretty enjoyable. There are a couple things that I think can stand to improve a bit:

• The discussion meanders a bit too much at times. I appreciate the fact that the podcast is mostly just these two guys having a conversation, but I think it would serve them and the listeners more to try to stick to the topic and make their points more succinctly. There are times when their conversation veers off in the direction of backstories and anecdotes, and soon you find yourself wondering what they were talking about in the first place.
• A little less self-promotion from Winer, please. Sometimes it feels like every segment contains a “I was one of the pioneers in …”, if not more. Yes, we get it. You got cred. Can we get back to the topic at hand now? Also, a little less obsessing by him with the many ways Twitter doesn’t work would also be appreciated. If I want to know more about that topic, I would go to his blog, where just about every post dovetails into Twitter’s failures. I’m not even an ardent defender of Twitter, and the constant kvetching is getting tiresome.

Speaking of Twitter …

A lot of the recent hoopla and backlash about Twitter, like celebrities’ use of it, strikes me as early Twitter adopters fighting against the application’s move into mainstream consciousness and all the ugliness that inherently accompany such a migration. I mean, the “Ugh” factor of anything would go up when Oprah jumps on board. That’s the price you pay for becoming popular among the masses.

It’s silly to get hung up on that and kvetch about things like how celebrities’ Twitter experience would be different from that of their followers. Twitter is just a compilation of codes resulting in an application that allows people to send messages 140 characters at a time. Different people with different aims use it differently. Some use it just to stay in touch with friends, some use it to filter the Web, some use it to peddle stuff, some use it for self-promotion, some use it to mobilize the masses, some use it for two-way communication, some use it just to broadcast messages, some use it to disseminate truths, some use it to spread lies. And you know what? All of those are fine. Everyone’s experience SHOULD be different. If Twitter only had one use, it wouldn’t be gaining popularity like it is now. To try to define what the “correct” Twitter experience or usage should be is like trying to say you are only suppose to use a notepad for one thing. Twitter is just a tool, with no inherent dictum on how it’s to be used.