The new new journalism
Shannon Rupp writes in The Tyee about “the really super new new journalism” in which journalists are “repeaters.” She describes an incident in which an editor paid a freelancer for a piece only to learn that the freelancer had simply put their byline on a press release.
Rupp’s not so sure this kind of practice can be condemned in the trade today, except as a case of lying to an editor: “(A)s an issue of journalism ethics, it isn’t quite as clearcut as it was even a decade ago. News media as a whole are running all sorts of self-serving propaganda and slapping bylines on it to make the content look like old-fashioned mediated news.”
And to nail her point home? Rupp points out that Vancouver Sun editor-in-chief Patricia Graham recently said Oprah Winfrey (!) was one of the journalists who inspire her:
“Graham is editor-in-chief at one of the leading papers in the country’s largest chain: if she says that a peddler of infotainment content like Oprah meets the definition of journalism, I think we have to believe her.”
