{"id":1193,"date":"2008-07-24T11:55:46","date_gmt":"2008-07-24T10:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2008-07-24T12:11:08","modified_gmt":"2008-07-24T11:11:08","slug":"the-teller-not-the-tale-link-based-journalism-and-rewrites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/07\/the-teller-not-the-tale-link-based-journalism-and-rewrites\/","title":{"rendered":"The teller not the tale: link based journalism and rewrites"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"McDonalds<\/a>W<\/span>hat value do newspapers add to information? A couple of days ago, I bookmarked this piece on product placement<\/a>, from the New York Times<\/em>. Basically, it’s about coffee cups appearing on the desk during a local morning news show in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

The Las Vegas Sun<\/em><\/a> reported it first on Monday:<\/p>\n

Oooooooh, they\u2019re calling out your name.<\/p>\n

Two cups of McDonald\u2019s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quoted? Fox 5 news director, Adam Bradshaw, and Kelly McBride of the journalism ethics outifit, Poynter. The New York Times<\/em> hat tips the Las Vegas Sun<\/em>, ditches the breezy style – and the line that the coffee and ice cubes are fake – and clocks up eight quoted sources in under a thousand words.<\/p>\n

And then Tom Leonard of the Telegraph<\/em> told it yesterday<\/a>, with a little historical colour and just a quote from Bradshaw. He mentioned both the NYT<\/em> and LVS<\/em>. The Guardian<\/em>‘s Ed Pilkington popped in an additional quote from a hitherto unheard-from Poynter pundit.<\/p>\n

So what’s the benefit here? Are rewrites journalism? Is the news business busy eating itself?<\/p>\n

The original ‘fun’ piece got the ‘shock and awe’ treatment from the NYT<\/em>, before being translated back into something for a different audience. Would Roy Greenslade<\/strong>‘s presentation – in a blog<\/a> with the relevant links – have been the best way to tell the story online? <\/p>\n

Jeff Jarvis<\/strong> argued in Cover What You Do Best, Link To The Rest: <\/a><\/p>\n

In the rearchitecture of news, what needs to happen is that people are driven to the best coverage, not the 87th version of the same coverage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well yes, journalism is on one level about information, but it’s all about audience. Most Telegraph<\/em> and Guardian<\/em> readers – in their capacity as information absorbers rather than seekers – probably don’t subscribe to the NYT<\/em> media section, or care about the story sufficiently to enter into it with the depth and gravity of the NYT<\/em>, or even want to click through to it, but they might want to be aware of it. And they might want that packaged in a casual but entertaining way.<\/p>\n

This is where the British journalistic tradition of caring more about the written word (see restaurant critic Giles Coren<\/strong><\/a>‘s impassioned defence of the indefinite article here<\/a>), than perhaps the facts (see the FT<\/em>‘s Gideon Rachman<\/a><\/strong> on US vs UK journalism), conflicts with Jarvis’ idea of a commoditised, fact-based media.<\/p>\n

My solution to that conflict? Arm-wrestling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What value do newspapers add to information? A couple of days ago, I bookmarked this piece on product placement, from the New York Times. Basically, it’s about coffee cups appearing on the desk during a local morning news show in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Sun reported it first on Monday: Oooooooh, they\u2019re calling out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1732,1725,1729,1724,1733,1619,1726,1731,1566,1705,1734,1730,1433,1475],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-adam-bradshaw","tag-ed-pilkington","tag-fact-based-media","tag-gideon-rachman","tag-giles-coren","tag-jeff-jarvis","tag-mcdonalds","tag-roy-greenslade","tag-the-guardian","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-telegraph","tag-tom-leonard","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions\/1196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}