media in the pub

I've been to a couple of conferences this year through the podjob that have discussed the bloggers v citizen journalists v traditional journalists. Usually they descend into petty name calling. Apparently these events don't happen often enough for everyone to have their say, because there was a whole new public rant night yesterday evening. I went along before the production meeting with my punksters. I was expecting more of the same old rivalry between content producers, but I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. There was only one dude who thought calling non-journalists 'morons' was the most productive way forward, and it was met by a satisfyingly comic "oooooooohhh". I also dug the fact that there were a lot of online entrepreneurs there with an equal voice to the journos. It was refreshing to hear all of these voices within the one conversation.

Now I'm not a journalist, a professional blogger or a citizen journalist. The podjob is in more of a service industry where I'm expected to give a professional assessment of the media to government and business. My job wouldn't exist if journalists were always fair and unbiased. So I find it pretty entertaining when journos sound off about how anyone other than a journalist writing content is diving in untrained, uneducated and highly biased. While the bias is definitely there, and is often more pronounced than in print media, I don't agree with the suggestion that the writers are uneducated. Oftentimes they are highly experienced in their field.

As for training, I think that there are multiple signs pointing towards the need to teach kids journalistic ethics from the word go as part of their civics lessons.

Later, went on to pow-pow about the music video. When I got there, I found out that the project had been canned momentarily, so we started rapping about a new narrative magical realism short that we'll pick up next month. No camping for that one, which is way too awesome.

My four days "off" weren't as hermit as I'd been hoping. I didn't sleep in my bed once. Too many parties. I'm up a couple of new friends but down my white jacket- I loved that thing, and some klepto took advantage and lifted it from the Eaton St party on saturday night. I'm hoping that seeing as we all have mutual friends involved, that they would have the COMMON HUMAN DECENCY to NOT BE LAME and return my jacket.