P-I citizen journalist wonders what's next
Although I'm not one of the unfortunate 170 Seattle P-I employees who will be out of a job soon, I am somewhat concerned about my future as a P-I Reader Blogger. I started blogging for the P-I in September 2006. Along with around 170 other bloggers, I cover a specific topic, and in my case it's one of 16 neighborhood blogs, simply called Whidbey Island Life.
Here's the official description:
Puget Sound is home to dozens of islands. Sue Frause has lived on Whidbey Island since 1975 and still thinks it's fun taking a ferry to get home. Read about her island's colorful characters and what makes Whidbey such a unique place.
My readership has grown over the past 2.5 years, and the last report I received had me at 11,269 page views for December 2008. Several times I even made it into the Top Ten, but I've yet to beat out Bus Chick or Digital Joystick. To date, I've posted 1,048 entries and readers have left 1,186 comments. Most of them printable.
So why write a blog for free? OK, "unpaid citizen journalism," that's how the P-I describes it. First off, it's a different type of writing than most traditional journalists are used to cranking out. It's shorter, snappier and can simply be random thoughts and opinions on any number of things. Having been a columnist for The South Whidbey Record from 1988-2003, it was fun for me to write about island life again. I was missing the connection to the place where I've lived so long.
Then there was the scoop factor. I can't deny that it's fun now and again to scoop the local media, or find an interesting person to profile who hasn't been overexposed in our island's newspapers. But the real reason I like blogging so much is that not only am I my own editor, it's current and correctable, and I don't have any mandatory assignments hanging over my head.
If I want to write about the annual Island County Fair, fine. If I can't face its barnyard scramble and curly fries one more time, that's OK, too. As far as deadlines go, it's my call.
The majority of the time I try to post daily, keeping it fresh and lively. The other big difference between print and online are the comments, which I generally answer. As I replied to one anonymous commenter who was unhappy that I would dare write about anything except Whidbey Island, "It's my blog and I'm pretty much free to write about what I wanna write about." That was the last I heard from him.
I'm also hooked on putting together the look of my blog, which combines both my words and photographs. It's the ultimate luxury in having it your way, right down to the headline. And in terms of marketing, it's been a good tool. I've been offered a number of paid writing gigs thanks to my blog in the P-I. (In fact, Crosscut is one of them.)
The P-I has been my newspaper of choice since I first started reading columnist Emmett Watson when I was a young girl growing up in Arlington, Washington. Shortly after word got out that the paper was being put up for sale, a reader stopped me on the ferry and asked what would become of my blog. I told him I didn't know. What I do know is that I'm sad to see the print edition of my newspaper fade away.
Comments:
Posted Sun, Mar 15, 7:52 p.m. inappropriate
You should understand that the p-i ( as a group ) is not worthy of being considered as journalistic work, in my opinion.
The liberals of seattle may miss this failed venture, but the p-i never served me as reporting in-depth and with balance. As far as the 'opinion' aspect, seems to me that there are a lot of people in seattle that are glad to see it gone.
watchdog of local govt ?? the rag was in bed with the demo's most of the time !
given the product that seattle public schools are turning out, there will be no future generations to miss this failure, less and less of them can read ( for comprehension ) with every passing school year.
Posted Sun, Mar 15, 8:53 p.m. inappropriate
So out of curiosity, what are your newspapers of choice in the Great Nearby?
Posted Sun, Mar 15, 9:35 p.m. inappropriate
I'm still trying to figure out what was supposedly so radically left-wing about the P-I... As for the reader blogs, Sue, you'd think the P-I would leave them as part of the new venture. Since the writers are unpaid, I don't see any economic reason for taking them down...
Posted Sun, Mar 15, 10:43 p.m. inappropriate
Benjamin: I've never understood the radically left-wing label either, as I don't consider myself such a creature, and I've been a reader of the P-I since I started reading newspapers. The word on the street is that there will be an online version of the P-I, and I assume that would include the P-I Reader Blogs ("unpaid citizen journalists"). Interesting to note that when I went into the P-I's blog site earlier this evening, it was down. It's still down. Maybe they're just changing the web address: www.readitinthepionlineonly.com.
Posted Mon, Mar 16, 8:22 a.m. inappropriate
"Citizen journalist." Better known as "free labor."
Posted Mon, Mar 16, 7:56 p.m. inappropriate
The Wall Street Journal
Posted Mon, Mar 16, 8:07 p.m. inappropriate
so radically left-wing about the P-I ?
ONE example, mind you :
Where is global warming ?
By Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe Columnist March 8, 2009
SUPPOSE the climate landscape in recent weeks looked something like this:
Half the country was experiencing its mildest winter in years, with no sign of snow in many Northern states. Most of the Great Lakes were ice free. Not a single Canadian province had had a white Christmas. There was a new study discussing a mysterious surge in global temperatures, a warming trend more intense than computer models had predicted. Other scientists admitted that, because of a bug in satellite sensors, they had been vastly overestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice.
If all that were happening on the climate change front, do you think you would be hearing about it on the news ? Seeing it on Page 1 of your daily paper ? Would politicians be exclaiming that global warming was even more of a crisis than they had thought ? Would environmentalists be skewering global warming deniers for clinging to their skepticism despite the growing case against it ?
No doubt !
But it is not such hints of a planetary warming trend that have been piling up in profusion lately. Just the opposite.
The United States has shivered through an unusually severe winter, with snow falling in such unlikely destinations as New Orleans, Las Vegas, Alabama, and Georgia. On Dec. 25, every Canadian province woke up to a white Christmas, something that had not happened in 37 years. Earlier this year, Europe was gripped by such a killing cold wave that trains were shut down in the French Riviera and chimpanzees in the Rome Zoo had to be plied with hot tea. Last week, satellite data showed three of the Great Lakes - Erie, Superior, and Huron - almost completely frozen over. In Washington, D.C., what was supposed to be a massive rally against global warming was upstaged by the heaviest snowfall of the season, which paralyzed the capital.
Meanwhile, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has acknowledged that due to a satellite sensor malfunction, it had been underestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles, an area the size of Spain. In a new study, University of Wisconsin researchers Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis conclude that global warming could be going into a decades long remission. The current global cooling is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950, Swanson told Discovery News. Yes, global cooling, 2008 was the coolest year of the past decade. Global temperatures have not exceeded the record high measured in 1998, notwithstanding the carbon dioxide that human beings continue to pump into the atmosphere.
None of this proves conclusively that a period of planetary cooling is irrevocably underway, or that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are not the main driver of global temperatures, or that concerns about a hotter world are overblown. Individual weather episodes, it always bears repeating, are not the same as broad climate trends.
But considering how much attention would have been lavished on a comparable run of hot weather or on a warming trend that was plainly accelerating, should not the recent cold phenomena and the absence of any global warming during the past 10 years be getting a little more notice ? Isnt it possible that the most apocalyptic voices of global warming alarmism might not be the only ones worth listening to ?
There is no shame in conceding that science still has a long way to go before it fully understands the immense complexity of the Earth's ever changing climate(s). It would be shameful not to concede it. The climate models on which so much global warming alarmism rests do not begin to describe the real world that we live in, says Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist and futurist. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand.
But for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. When Al Gore insisted yet again at a conference last Thursday that there can be no debate about global warming, he was speaking not with the authority of a man of science, but with the closed minded dogmatism of a religious zealot. Dogma and zealotry have their virtues, no doubt. But if we want to understand where global warming has gone, those are not the tools we need.
Just what is it you don't understand about a 'paper' that only serves up the al gore lies, as being viewed liberal ?????
When ( give me a date ) did you ever read an article or opinion ( p-i ) that served up the CURRENT considerable climate and atmospheric science showing that we all just may be headed for a deep global cooling ???? Its
out there ! Do you ever bother to look ??????????
Again, this is ONE example, now what is it you don't understand ???????
Posted Tue, Mar 17, 7:39 a.m. inappropriate
Steptoe.fan: I'm a bit confused as to why you used a Boston Globe columnist as an example...did that piece run in the P-I? Seems like you could have selected a P-I staff writer to prove your point. I just returned from ten days in Antarctica where it was 37 degrees, warmer than Seattle. Granted, it was summer down there. I'm planning a trip to the Arctic Circle this summer. Hopefully there will still be some polar bears when I'm up there. Gotta see Mother Nature before she totally disappears!