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Nov

5

Take those damn scare quotes off of “citizen” journalism


The Society of Professional Journalists has an event this Wednesday evening:

Nov. 7 – SPJ After Work: Local News, Next Steps (The Sequel)
“Backpack” and “Citizen” journalism, the pressure on “old media” to become “new media” and the impact of all of these trends on news will be on the table for discussion by a panel of Cleveland news professionals Wednesday, Nov. 7, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at The Little Bar, 614 Frankfort Court, in the Warehouse District of downtown Cleveland.

The cost is $15 for SPJ members and $20 for non-members for “Happy Hour” pizza, snacks and a cash bar. RSVP by 5 p.m., Nov. 5, to Tom Moore, SPJ chapter secretary-treasurer, at 440-333-7382 or sending an e-mail message to tmoore56@msn.com

Among those confirmed for the panel are David Molpus, executive editor of Ideastream WVIZ/WCPN; Dan Salamone, news director of WOIO/WUAB-TV19/43, Elizabeth McIntyre, assistant managing editor/news, and Jean Dubail, assistant managing editor/online for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. John Carroll University’s Dick Hendrickson will moderate. Come and enjoy the networking with fellow journalists and other writers, then join the discussion.

Maybe the Wide Open debacle was created to give them something to talk about.

I can’t go, but if you do, don’t beat up on Jean too much. He’s not the main perpetrator of all that went wrong. Not that he doesn’t find fault with what happened, on his end, but people name-calling him out is just misguided.

As for the scare quotes around “citizen” – sheesh. Here’s one definition of a scare quote:

Scare quotes are quotation marks placed around a word or phrase from which you, the writer, wish to distance yourself because you consider that word or phrase to be odd or inappropriate for some reason. Possibly you regard it as too colloquial for formal writing; possibly you think it’s unfamiliar or mysterious; possibly you consider it to be inaccurate or misleading; possibly you believe it’s just plain wrong. Quite often scare quotes are used to express irony or sarcasm:

The Serbs are closing in on the “safe haven” of Gora^@de.

The point here is that the town has been officially declared a safe haven by the UN, whereas in fact, as the quote marks make clear, it is anything but safe.

You can read other defintions here and here.

FWIW, I guess I’m in a resigning kind of mood. I just emailed the SPJ Cleveland Pro chapter about how I go about resigning from the board. I was surprised that they invited me on in the first place and have been letting my connection to it languish since the national took the side of publishers against freelancers (then withdrew that position after freelancers raised a ruckus, thank you, Wendy Hoke, in a recent lawsuit case but now, when I see the info in the regular newsletter, it looks very “stuck” to me – and yes, you should be scared by those scare quotes.

I know what it’s like to deal with stuck people, because I just expended a lot of energy working to get something – an online political site – unstuck. You can listen here to Susan Goldberg defend staying stuck (though I’m sure she doesn’t see her position that way).

This issue of being stuck would probably be a great place to start on Wednesday evening: how is it that some in journalism, traditional, MSM “old media” journalism get it, and others have to use scare quotes when they think about new media and citizen journalism?

Why is the word “citizen” so scary when placed before the word “journalism”?

Now that thought – that some people find citizens scary – scares me.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:27 pm November 5th, 2007 in Blogging, Media, Tech, Wide Open 

Comments

One Response to “Take those damn scare quotes off of “citizen” journalism”

  1. 1 Keith on November 5th, 2007 1:33 pm

    Jill:

    I know I’ve been going off like a howitzer on the PD so today I reviewed the Springsteen concert. Frankly, I’ve had enough of the PD. If Diadiun hadn’t written anything I would have let it go. But we have a, uh, past. I’m not sure I can listen to Ms. Goldberg right now. I’ve been worked up enough lately. But from your comments it doesn’t surprise me. The iron law of institutions will always out

    http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001705.html

    Definition: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

    I think that is generally correct.

    Maybe after we meet your restraint and level-headedness will rub off on me. :)

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