2 pages essay

News with Views: Postobjectivism and Emergent Alternative Journalistic Practices in America’s Corporate News Media Farooq A. Kperogi

One of the inchoate yet defining features of journalism in the twenty-first century has

been the profession’s unannounced but nonetheless consequential repudiation of the

time-honored journalistic ethos of ‘‘objectivity.’’ In this paper, I argue that the gradual

renunciation of the ideals of objectivity in contemporary journalistic practice, especially

in the United States which birthed the concept, is both a return to journalism’s roots and

a back-handed, if profit-inspired, embrace of certain hallmarks of ‘‘alternative journalism,’’

which emerged as a counterfoil to nineteenth-century notions of ‘‘objective journalism.’’

I demonstrate my thesis by historicizing ‘‘objective journalism’’ and linking its emergence to

multiple impulses: industrial capitalism’s desire to capture as many eyeballs to consumer

goods as possible using the instrumentality of the mass media; the seduction of nineteenth-

century positivism, which conduced to the uncritical valorization of epistemic precision,

measurability, the ‘‘scientific method,’’ detachment, and other manifestations of naı̈ve

empiricism; and the turn-of-of-century delinking of political parties from newspaper

business. I also argue that the progressive abandonment of the tenets of ‘‘objective

journalism’’ by the legacy media is an artful hegemonic containment of alternative

journalism’s age-old ideals and singularities. This, I point out, is actuated by

the imperatives of survival in an increasingly uncertain and fragmented media market,

made even more so by the unexampled discursive democracy and diversity that the

Internet has enabled, which has contributed to the flourishing of citizen and alternative

journalism.

Keywords: News; Views; Postobjectivism; Alternative Journalistic Practices; Corporate;

News Media; Mainstream Media; Citizen Journalism

Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Citizen Media at Kennesaw State University,

Georgia, USA. Correspondence to: Dr. Farooq Kperogi, Department of Communication, College of

Humanities and Social Sciences, Kennesaw State University, 1000 Chastian Road, Kennesaw, GA 30144, U.S.A.

E-mail: [email protected]

ISSN 1535-8593 (online) # 2013 National Communication Association

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2012.752521

The Review of Communication

Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2013, pp. 48�65

One of the inchoate yet defining features of journalism in the 21st century has been

the profession’s unannounced but nonetheless consequential move away from the

time-honored journalistic ethos of ‘‘objectivity.’’ With the growth and flowering of

‘‘niche journalism’’ and the reality of audience fragmentation*encapsulated in phenomena variously characterized as ‘‘microcasting’’ or ‘‘narrow-casting’’*the ideals of demonstrating apolitical, deadpan, and vulgar empiricist sensitivity to the

viewpoints of a broad, diverse spectrum of the mass audience*which many have argued are, in reality, illusory and unrealizable ideals*are diminishing in salience and professional prestige.

1 This is evident in the fact that in America’s corporate

media universe, the most popular media outlets are now, for the most part, those that

are unabashedly partisan and that, in essence, if not in name, disclaim pretenses to

‘‘objectivity,’’ ‘‘fairness,’’ and ‘‘balance’’ in news reportage and commentary. It is no

accident that Fox News Network and MSNBC have a core of aggressively loyal viewers

in ways other American cable news networks have not.

In this paper, I argue that the gradual renunciation of the ideals of objectivity in

much of contemporary journalistic practice in the United States, which birthed the

concept, is both a return to journalism’s roots and a back-handed, if profit-inspired,

embrace of certain hallmarks of ‘‘alternative journalism,’’ which emerged as a

counterfoil to 19th-century notions of ‘‘objective journalism.’’ I demonstrate my

thesis by historicizing ‘‘objective journalism’’ and linking its emergence to multiple

impulses: industrial capitalism’s desire to capture as many eyeballs to consumer

goods as possible using the instrumentality of the mass media; the seduction of

19th-century positivism, which conduced to the uncritical valorization of epistemic

precision, measurability, the ‘‘scientific method,’’ detachment, and other manifesta-

tions of naı̈ve empiricism; and the turn-of-century delinking of political parties from

newspaper business. I also show how ‘‘objective journalism’’ activated the evolvement

of ‘‘alternative’’ notions of journalistic practice and show specific instances of the

adoption of alternative media practices by the corporate media. Finally, I argue that

the progressive abandonment of the tenets of ‘‘objective journalism’’ by the corporate

media is an artful hegemonic cooptation of alternative journalism’s age-old ideals and

singularities. This, I further point out, is actuated by the imperatives of survival in an

increasingly uncertain and fragmented media market, made even more so by the

unexampled discursive democracy and diversity that the Internet has enabled, which

has contributed to the flourishing of citizen journalism.

Traditional Journalism Returns to its Roots

In bemoaning the putative decline in the quality of modern journalistic output, it is

now fashionable in popular commentaries to invoke the death or dearth of ‘‘objective

journalism’’ as evidence of journalism’s atrophy. 2

In the popular imagination,

‘‘objectivity,’’ however conceived, has been constructed as an intrinsic, ever-present,

and non-negotiable attribute of journalism. Deviation from it is considered a tragic

betrayal of journalism’s most inviolable article of faith. As Ryan put it, ‘‘If the media

News with Views 49

enforce objectivity as a standard, they will flourish; if not, they will not . . . .’’3

However, if indeed American journalism*and other journalistic models it has inspired in other parts of the world*is abandoning the precept of ‘‘objectivity,’’ it is not betraying journalism’s heritage. On the contrary, the move toward partisan

journalism, especially of the kind typified by such cable news channels as Fox News

and MSNBC, is actually a return to American journalism’s roots. Until the latter half

of the 19th century, newspapers in America were established solely as the propaganda

arms of political parties. Newspapers’ reportorial temperaments were therefore

unapologetically partisan. They made no claims to being anything other than

instruments for the vigorous espousal of viewpoints that were congenial to the

interests, goals, and aspirations of their political patrons. They were, as Porwancher

stated, ‘‘an integral component of political party machinery.’’ 4

Embrace of the notions

of objectivity, fairness, and balance by the conventional mass media occurred much

later in American journalism history.

Although in colonial American journalism printers venerated the virtues of

neutrality and fairness, they were not journalists, nor did they conceive themselves

as such. 5

They were tradesmen who understood their duties as nothing more than

serving as disinterested vessels through which information passed to the general

public. Their notion of neutrality consisted in a commitment to providing

professional services to people from all political persuasions. In any case, because

colonial newspapers avoided national controversies and merely reproduced news

reports from the London press, they did not play a significant role in American

national discourse at the time. A poignant illustration of the marginality of colonial

newspapers in American public life can be gleaned from Clark and Wetherell’s

insightful study, which revealed that of 1,900 stories published in Benjamin

Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette from 1728 to 1765, only 34 concerned events in

Philadelphia or Pennsylvania. 6

Thus, printers’ neutrality or lack thereof had no

consequence.

However, when conflict with England intensified in 1765, American journalism

began to play a more central role in galvanizing and mobilizing popular sentiments in

support of nationalist causes. At precisely the time that newspapers became

consequential in American public discourse*which can legitimately be historicized as their time of birth* they adopted a fiercely partisan advocatorial editorial tem- perament.

7 As many media historians have noted, up to the 1890s and even beyond,

coverage of presidential elections was often heavily colored by party allegiances, and

often consisted in the willful denigration and distortion of the viewpoints of

opposing political parties. Self-consciously extravagant exaggeration of the strengths

and merits of favored parties was also a defining characteristic of the journalism of

the period. As Schudson pointed out:

[W]hen a standard Republican paper covered a presidential election, it not only deplored and derided Democratic candidates in editorials but often just neglected to mention them in the news. In the days before public opinion polling, the size of partisan rallies was taken as a proxy for likely electoral results. Republican

50 F. A. Kperogi

rallies would be described as ‘monster meetings’ while Democratic rallies were often not covered at all. And in the Democratic papers, of course, it was just the reverse.

8

This portrait of the editorial character of 19th-century American newspapers is

consistent with the recorded observations of many 19th-century European visitors to

America. For instance, Charles Dickens, whose 1842 visit to America generated

tremendous excitement on the pages of American newspapers, 9

described the

American press as corrupt, unreliable, licentious, and as collectively representing a

‘‘monster of depravity.’’ 10

For Dickens, American newspapers and journalists were

mere instruments of politicians, whom he accused of ‘‘cowardly attacks upon

opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers.’’ 11

So,

open political partisanship in reportage and commentary was as normative then as

the ideals of ‘‘objectivity,’’ ‘‘fairness,’’ and ‘‘balance’’ have been to varying degrees in

America’s journalistic landscape since the early 20th century. Journalists did not

conceive of their roles as watchdogs of the society or, to paraphrase Chicago

journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne, as comforters of the afflicted and

afflicters of the comfortable; they were instruments of politicians and political

parties. 12

As Kaplan noted, the social basis of newspapers’ social legitimacy derived

from their association with political parties. 13

‘‘The New York Tribune, for instance,’’

Kaplan pointed out, ‘‘gained national prominence during 1876�1910 as the quasi- authorized organ of the Republican Party’s reform wing. The line between journalist

and politician blurred as the Tribune’s staff often advised the president and its

publisher was nominated for vice-president in 1892.’’ 14

This state of affairs continued until much later in the century when a new

journalistic ethic, which later became known as ‘‘objective journalism,’’ emerged.

Objective journalism came to encapsulate a broad range of ideals, prominent among

which are accuracy, fairness, impartiality, authorial and reportorial detachment,

independence, and responsibility to the public welfare. 15

Media scholars have

attributed many influences to the evolution of the U.S. media from passionate,

partisan defenders of narrow political loyalties to more inclusive discursive arenas.

These influences ranged from the 1830s Jacksonian Revolution, which was

characterized by a profusion of mass political parties and the expansion of market

economy; the 1870s Mugwump rebellion against unthinking political party

allegiances; industrial capitalism’s desire to deploy the mass media to access the

huge, emergent pool of mass, heterogeneous consumer base that had sprouted; the

news media’s appreciation of the economic benefit of attracting advertising dollars

from all political parties by jettisoning partisanship; the influence of positivism and

‘‘value-free’’ scientific inquiry; the emergence of a corps of college-educated

journalists who wanted to confer respectability and distinct professional identity

on their craft in the early 1900s; and the imperatives of brevity that the emergence of

the telegraph as the central technology for sending news inspired. 16

Whatever it is,

from the early 19th century, ‘‘objectivity’’ came to define the core of American

journalistic practice. It entails or attempts to entail such reportorial rituals as

detachment, avoidance of adjectives in straight news reports, writing in the third

News with Views 51

person, attributing opinions to news sources, attempting to reflect the perspectives of

different sides to an issue, disengagement from ideological associations, political

neutrality, etc. 17

An important component of this shift was the emergence of

advertising, rather than subsidies from political parties, as the main source of revenue

for newspapers. With this shift in source of funding, objectivity became the ‘‘lifeblood

of the US press.’’ 18

Previously existing or emergent alternative models of journalistic

practice were rhetorically marginalized as deviant and worthy only of contempt.

Criticism of Objectivity

Although objective journalism became the canon of journalistic practice*and one of America’s most prized intellectual and cultural exports to the rest of the world*it has attracted criticism from several scholars since at least the 1960s.

19 For instance,

Nanda posited that to the extent that journalists are always already inserted into

gender, racial, and other social relational categories, it is impossible for them to

suspend these sorts of baggage in their evaluation of the truth. 20

Objective journalism

is also criticized for sometimes obscuring the truth through its mechanical,

unproblematized juxtaposition of the ‘‘two sides’’ of an issue. As Durham put it,

‘‘The reportorial canon of presenting all perspectives without engagement with the

political valences of such perspectives effectively prevents any progressive or

emancipatory politics from developing out of journalism.’’ 21

Other scholars argue that, in spite of pretenses to the contrary, commercialized

journalism, by its very nature, privileges and naturalizes the dominant classes in the

society. Although the canons of objective journalism impose on journalists the

burden to reflect all sides to an issue, dissenting and oppositional views do not often

fit very easily into the prevailing frameworks of imagery and expression, and are

therefore heard and read by the mass audience as deviant, and as no more than

crackles of background noise, which further pushes their points of view to the fringes

and perpetrates the ruling classes’ interests. 22

The media, in spite of claims to practice

objective journalism, in the final analysis, serve ‘‘to reinforce a consensual viewpoint

by using public idioms and by claiming to voice public opinion.’’ 23

Therefore, in place

of objective journalism, which Merrill and Lowenstein have characterized as ‘‘too

staid, dull, pallid, and noncommitted for the new generation of audience members

being raised in a climate of instant confrontation, dissent, and permissiveness,’’ 24

critics have advocated the embrace of our lived subjectivities through alternative

models of journalistic practice. This consideration has led alternative journalistic

practices to luxuriate on the fringes of mainstream media practices. But what is

alternative journalism? What singularities of alternative journalism are now being

adopted by the mainline institutional media formation?

Conceptualizing Alternative Journalism

Relative to traditional, mainstream ‘‘professional’’ journalism, alternative journalism

has historically attracted little scholarly attention from both critical and administrative

52 F. A. Kperogi

researchers. 25

The last ten years, however, have witnessed a profusion of scholarly

interest in alternative journalism. 26

This is certainly partly a consequence of the

popularity and ubiquity of the Internet and the expansion of the discursive space that it

enables, evidenced in the unexampled blossoming of several web-based citizen and

alternative media, and the progressive decline in the centrality of ‘‘objectivity’’ in the

news business, what Hackett has called ‘‘the significant erosion of the regime of

objectivity’’ in mainstream news media practice. 27

But although many critical media

scholars have robustly and carefully captured the emergence, constraints, motives,

practices, prospects, singularities, and dominant thematic preoccupations of alternative

media, there is no universally agreed upon conception of what alternative journalism is. 28

As Atton has noted, 29

until relatively recently, the only definitive scholarly study of

alternative journalism was John Downing’s influential book on the subject. 30

For

Downing, the distinctiveness of alternative journalism lied in its self-conscious

subversion of the elaborate hierarchies typical of professional news organizations and

in its explicitly nonconformist and counterhegemonic political agenda. Downing drew

clear contrasts between alternative media and the mainstream media and maintained

that the operations of the mainstream media are animated by crass profit motive, are

organized according to predetermined, exclusive professional and routinized standards,

and are hallmarked by entrenched hierarchies. In other words, as Atton observed,

Downing’s conception of alternative media privileges ‘‘media that are written and run by

nonprofessionals, by groups that are primarily activists for progressive social change.’’ 31

As more critical media scholars became interested in the systematic study of

alternative media, however, conceptions of what constitutes alternative journalism

became much more complicated than Downing’s simplistic, if historically contingent,

binaries. Since the publication of Downing’s book, at least five other notable scholarly

books, among them another book by Downing that revises his earlier approach, have

been published, all of which have sought to more carefully capture the complexity of

alternative journalism. 32

Similarly, at least five journal issues have devoted exclusive

attention to the subject of alternative journalism. 33

As Gibbs and Hamilton have pointed out, part of the difficulty of providing an all-

encompassing definition of alternative journalism is that the term is often merely a

convenient label that encapsulates*or seeks to encapsulate*a variety of nonhege- monic media practices that are vastly diverse in aims, goals, and specificities, and that

replace or supplant ‘‘more specific designations such as the ‘labor press,’ ‘feminist

press,’ or ‘underground media.’’’ 34

Campbell agreed that terms like ‘‘alternative press’’

tend to be used as ‘‘broad-brush collective terms for a disparate body of practices,’’

although common themes can often be isolated from these practices. 35

Scholars who

want to remain faithful to the differential motivations that actuate the practices of

alternative media formations often distinguish between ‘‘oppositional’’ alternative

media and ‘‘advocacy’’ alternative media to take account of the dominant concerns

that inform several different alternative media practices. 36

While advocacy alternative

media often function as the mouthpieces of organized social movements, opposi-

tional alternative media are usually not wedded to any definite political cause or

social movement.

News with Views 53

However, even though the term ‘‘alternative media’’ would appear to dissolve

the singularities that characterize a wide variety of counterhegemonic, insurgent media

practices, Gibbs and Hamilton insist that ‘‘it is extremely useful to see them together

because such a move emphasizes their collective resistance to increasingly monolithic

commercialized media systems and products.’’ 37

In fact, Downing, in his later work on

alternative media, agreed with Campbell 38

that in spite of what might seem like the

vastly divergent goals of various categories of alternative media, they are actually

united by the dual functions they all perform: as ‘‘counterinformation institutions’’

and as ‘‘agents of developmental power.’’ 39

It is because of this dual function that some

scholars have broadly characterized this genre of journalism as ‘‘insurgent journal-

ism’’ 40

or ‘‘counterhegemonic journalism.’’ 41

In other words, alternative journalism’s

meaning can only be realized in opposition to the established, mainstream media.

Such a discursive delineation provides the conceptual justification for the customary

practice in media studies to conceive of ‘‘alternative’’ media in binary opposition to the

‘‘mainstream’’ media, with ‘‘‘mainstream’ seen as maximizing audiences by appealing

to safe, conventional formulas and ‘alternative’ foregoing the comfortable, depoliticiz-

ing formulas to advocate programs of social change.’’ 42

In other words, while the

mainline media embrace ‘‘objectivity’’ because of its capacity to attract eyeballs to the

consumer goods advertised in the their space and airtime, alternative media jettison it

for its tendency to stifle progressive social change. It is in the same vein that Haas

conceived of alternative media as ‘‘media devoted to providing representations of

issues and events which oppose those offered in the mainstream media and to

advocating social and political reform.’’ 43

This means, in essence, that alternative media define themselves*or are defined* only in contradistinction to the mainstream media. Where the mainstream media are

impersonal and professionally managed, alternative media are ‘‘self-managed.’’ 44

Where the mainstream media are formally structured, alternative media are ‘‘non-

hierarchical.’’ 45

Where the practices of the mainstream media are motivated by profit

motive, those of the alternative media are motivated by ‘‘collectivist-democratic’’

ideals. 46

By being radically different from the mainstream media in structure and

content, alternative media seek to comfort a broad range of subaltern populations

either that are pushed to the margins of the mainstream media or that are completely

excluded from them. 47

Most importantly, according to scholars of alternative media, while the main-

stream media impose on themselves the responsibility to create and nurture an

‘‘informed’’ citizenry, alternative media practitioners have as their goal the desire to

inspire a ‘‘mobilized’’ citizenry. 48

As Tomaselli and Louw put it, alternative media

practitioners perceive their role more as ‘‘facilitators of social communication’’ than

as ‘‘sources of information.’’ 49

This explains why scholars of alternative media

variously characterize the unequivocally political content of alternative journalism as

‘‘mobilizing information,’’ 50

‘‘information for action,’’ 51

‘‘action on action,’’ 52

or

simply ‘‘useful information.’’ 53

Other scholars locate the difference between alternative media and mainstream

media in terms of their differential conventions of news sourcing. While the

54 F. A. Kperogi

routinized professional practices of the mainstream media often predispose them to

take recourse to ‘‘the systematic accessing of powerful, resource-rich institutions and

their definition of events*and to the marginalization of resource-poor social groups and interests,’’

54 alternative media actively seek a ‘‘different cast of accessed ‘officials’

and other voices.’’ 55

They adopt a newsgathering practice that has been dubbed

‘‘native reporting,’’ which Atton defined as an alternative newsgathering practice

‘‘where social actors, instead of being subjects of the news, become their own

correspondents, reporting on their own experiences, struggles and ideas.’’ 56

This

nonconformist alternative media reportorial practice finds its most sophisticated

expression in what Couldry calls ‘‘active witnessing,’’ 57

which Peters described

elsewhere as a situation in which ‘‘one is a privileged possessor and producer of

knowledge in an extraordinary, often forensic, setting in which speech and truth are

policed in multiple ways.’’ 58

In other words, for the mainstream media, the primary definers of news are people

who occupy the upper end of the social scale, while for the alternative media the

voices of the voiceless take precedence. Predictably, this makes most ‘‘professional’’

news hardly more than the concerns, interpretations, and the cultural biases of the

privileged few in the society. The concerns of the lower rung of the social order are

highlighted only under special circumstances, only when ‘‘news hooks present

themselves.’’ 59

An additional consequence of this demotion of the concerns of

subalterns to the fringes and the elevation of the concerns of the upper classes to the

forefront is that the society is often burdened with a media formation in which

‘‘consumerism, the market, class inequality, and individualism tend to be taken as

natural and often benevolent, whereas political activity, civic values, and antimarket

activities tend to be marginalized or denounced.’’ 60

It is this media practice that

liberatory alternative media seeks to reverse and, in its place, inaugurate a media

system

where working people, sexual minorities, trade unions, protest groups*people of low status in terms of their relationship to elite groups of owners, managers and senior professionals*could make their own news, whether by appearing in it as significant actors or by creating news relevant to their situation.

61

This is possible because many people involved with alternative journalism, Harcup

reminded us, ‘‘see their journalism as ‘political activity’ . . ., a perspective that appears to be far from the norm among journalists in the wider industry.’’

62

Problematizing the Binary Opposition of Alternative and Mainstream Media

It is obvious from the foregoing that the germinal conceptions of alternative

journalism, which are still influential today, locate it in binary opposition to what has

been understood as the mainstream media. Perhaps this is not altogether surprising.

After all, the very notion of ‘‘alternativeness’’ presupposes not just an opposition to

something but, in fact, mutual exclusivity with the thing.

Lately, however, a few scholars of alternative media have begun to question the

ontological utility of this dualist conception of alternative media. In his later works,

News with Views 55

Downing 63

has conceded that the dualism of his earlier typology imposed

definitional and discursive burdens on the notion of alternative journalism. He has

identified two fundamental flaws with his earlier approach. He terms the first flaw

‘‘anti-binarism’’ and the second ‘‘binarism.’’ Downing has acknowledged that these

flaws prevented him from appreciating the subtleties and continuums that exist

between alternative media and mainstream media, and he ended up with an account

that ‘‘seriously simplified both.’’ 64

Many other scholars are recognizing the futility of an ‘‘either or’’ approach to

understanding alternative media. Atton for instance, following Downing’s self-

criticism, has argued that it is more useful to talk of the ‘‘hybridity’’ of reportorial

practices within ‘‘the contemporary media landscape,’’ and has pointed to ‘‘the

complex, hybrid nature of alternative media in relation to its mainstream counter-

parts.’’ 65

Harcup has also called attention to what he termed the ‘‘crossover

grouping,’’ that is, current mainstream media practitioners who were previously

alternative journalists and vice versa. 66

Similarly, the mainstream media have increasingly incorporated into their

professional repertoire media practices that were thought to be exclusive to

alternative media formations. Such mainstream media practices as public or civic

journalism, 67

which are becoming more and more fashionable, especially with the

popularity of online media, are borrowed from alternative media practices, as will be

shown in the next section of this paper. There are also many respects in which

alternative media practices borrow from the mainstream media.

Alternative Media Practices in Contemporary Mainstream Media

In the last few years, as I have prefigured in previous pages, the corporate media,

confronted by loss of credibility, the reality of increasing migration of advertising

dollars to the plethora of emergent Web-based news platforms, and an uncertain

future in view of the kaleidoscopic changes in the media landscape, have been

abandoning traditional conceptions of objectivity and adopting nonconventional

news practices that would have been dismissed as ‘‘unprofessional’’ generations ago.

In other words, the corporate media, for largely commercial reasons, have been

increasingly co-opting the time-honored reportorial practices of the alternative media

formation, broadly conceived.

For example, mainstream media organizations now maintain and support vibrant,

largely uncensored online citizen media that, in fact, provide more untrammeled

avenues to ventilate strong opinions than many forms of alternative media. A recent

‘‘State of the News Media’’ report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found

that, paradoxically, the mainstream media provide greater mechanisms for feedback

and critiques than do most citizen media, challenging the high ground on which

alternative journalism stood for a long time. 68

This trend did not begin with the

emergence of the Internet, however. Since 1993, according to Rosen, sections of the

corporate media birthed the notion of ‘‘public journalism’’ or ‘‘civic journalism,’’

which actively seeks the input of ordinary people in decisions about news gathering

56 F. A. Kperogi

and reporting. 69

It emerged as a reaction to ‘‘the deepening chasm between

journalism and the citizens it professes to serve on the one hand and between the

quotidian concerns of ordinary people and public life in general on the other.’’ 70

As

Nip pointed out,

Town hall meetings, citizen panels, and polls are common techniques used to tap the concerns of the community, which would then form the reporting agenda for the journalists. During the news-gathering process, professional journalists often report back to the citizens what they have found for generating discussion in search of solutions to the problems . . . . There have been cases where the citizens even partnered with the professionals in gathering the news.

71

This reportorial model, which attracted withering criticisms from many professional

journalists when it first emerged, is clearly a cooptation of alternative journalism’s

age-old ‘‘native reporting’’ concept, ‘‘where social actors, instead of being subjects of

the news, become their own correspondents, reporting on their own experiences,

struggles and ideas.’’ 72

However, unlike alternative journalism’s active witnessing, the

corporate media’s civic journalism is not inspired by progressive, emancipatory

ideals. Profit is its main motive force and, while it does empower ordinary people in

ways traditional reporting did not, it actually retains the ultimate narrative power

and agenda setting advantage in the hands of professional journalists. As Woodstock

pointed out, ‘‘traditional and public journalisms adopt similar narrative strategies to

effect essentially the same ends: placing the power of telling society’s stories in the

hands of journalists.’’ 73

Over the last few years, the commercialized media have conceded more of their

professional authority to ordinary citizens. Corporate media-enabled citizen journal-

ism projects have been sprouting luxuriantly since the emergence of Web 2.0.

A perfect instantiation of this move is CNN’s popular iReport.com, a ‘‘citizen

journalism experiment that gives ordinary people from everywhere in the world the

opportunity to contribute unedited, unfiltered, and uncensored user-generated video

and text-based news reports.’’ 74

In other words, it allows the people Rosen has called

‘‘the people formerly known as the audience’’ 75

to perform what Lasica called

‘‘random acts of journalism.’’ 76

The project’s popularity has compelled other big

media organizations to adopt that model of corporate-sponsored citizen journalism.

ABC News, for instance, has its own ‘‘i-Caught.com,’’ Fox News has ‘‘uReport.com,’’

MSNBC created ‘‘FirstPerson.com,’’ and so on. So it is catching on. This model of

journalism is clearly a repudiation of the ideal of ‘‘objectivity.’’ Ordinary citizens,

unencumbered by professional journalistic requirements of ‘‘objectivity,’’ ‘‘fairness,’’

and ‘‘balance’’ report the news from their own perspectives. In many cases, citizen

reports submitted to these sites end up in the main telecasts of the corporate media.

The CNN iReport model is obviously an alternative media reportorial practice, which

Couldry called ‘‘active witnessing.’’ 77

Similarly, almost all the major corporate media organizations in the United States

have inaugurated participatory, ‘‘crowdsourcing’’ platforms on their sites. The term

‘‘crowdsourcing’’ was neologized by Jeff Howe who defined it as ‘‘the act of taking a

job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and

News with Views 57

outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an

open call.’’ 78

In a journalistic context, crowdsourcing entails the solicitation of news,

video, photos, and audio clips from people who are not affiliated with any news

organization and who may not be professional journalists. For instance, in 2006, USA

Today, America’s most widely circulated newspaper, embraced the principle of

‘‘crowdsourcing of in-depth investigations into government malfeasance.’’ 79

Its

embrace of the newfangled practice*from the point of view of traditional journalism, that is*was inspired by the success that The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida, recorded with it. When citizens in the paper’s reader catchment area

complained to the newspaper’s editors about the suspicious and inexplicable hike in

the cost of connecting newly constructed homes to water and sewer lines, the

assignment editors did not assign the story to their investigative reporters; they

instead solicited the participation of citizens in the investigation of the story. As a

result, community members organized themselves into small citizen investigative

units: ‘‘Retired engineers analyzed blueprints, accountants pored over balance sheets,

and an inside whistle-blower leaked documents showing evidence of bid-rigging.’’ 80

The crowdsourced reportorial effort succeeded in reducing the exorbitant utility fees

by more than 30%, caused one official to resign, and contributed to making utility fee

the main issue in a city-council special election. This model of journalistic practice,

which borrows from the concept of ‘‘native reporting’’ and ‘‘active witnessing’’ in

alternative journalism, is now being mainstreamed in much of the corporate media

formation in the United States. Ten years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

What would have also been unthinkable in traditional journalism until a few years

ago is the mainstreaming of what Bell has called ‘‘the journalism of attachment’’*the idea that journalists can have impassioned and vigorous personal opinions about the

issues they cover; that they can give expression to their quotidian, experiential, and

emotional subjectivities in news* in contravention of the expectation of detachment that ‘‘objective journalism’’ imposes on them.

81 In the early days of the Internet,

traditional news organizations sanctioned journalists who had blogs or who blogged

about the news they covered. As Friend and Singer noted,

The list of reporters who have found themselves in trouble for expressing their opinion in blogs is fairly long. It includes, among others, a CNN correspondent whose bosses told him to stop blogging about his experiences covering the war in Iraq; a Hartford Courant columnist who lost his column along with his blog after editors declared the latter a conflict of interest; a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who resigned after being criticized for writing a blog in which he lambasted the paper; a Houston Chronicle bureau chief fired after using his blog to assess politicians he covered for the paper.

82

The gatekeepers in corporate news organizations had feared that the expressive

spontaneity that blogging permits and the blurring of the boundaries of news and

views it entails*precisely the reportorial rituals of alternative and other nondomi- nant forms of journalism*endangered the age-old strategic, procedural formalities of objective journalism. Interestingly, at the time journalists were being fired in

corporate news organization for imprinting their personal signatures in news

58 F. A. Kperogi

narratives, alternative media sites such as Indymedia (a network of alternative media

practitioners that grew out of the 1999 global protests against the World Trade

Organization) had institutionalized this reportorial practice, which invites what

Mikhail Bakhtin would call an ‘‘emotional-volitional tone’’ in news and commentary.

Today, ‘‘j-blogging,’’ which inscribes journalists’ personal signatures in news and

commentary, has rapidly become an integral part of the news operations of most

American news organizations. ‘‘Hundreds of American news organizations,’’ Friend

and Singer tell us, ‘‘are turning their journalists loose to blog.’’ 83

News reporters not

only write the news but also blog about it both in their personal spaces and in the

blogging platforms provided for them on their companies’ news websites. This model

of personalized journalism was the exclusive preserve of nondominant, marginal

news media concerns. To be sure, though, news and opinion have always coexisted in

traditional news practices. As Mark Deuze points out, ‘‘When journalists blog, they

do more of what they did when, for example, they were writing op-eds in newspapers,

doing columns on the radio, or providing interpretation and analysis as a

correspondent on television.’’ 84

However, explicitly opinion-driven, personalized

journalism of the sort that was pioneered and popularized by such news sites as

Indymedia is novel to the corporate news media. Its embrace is inspired by at least

two factors. The first is the growing thirst for expressive journalism by young people.

Cunningham, for instance, tells us that ‘‘In the January/February issue of [Columbia

Journalism Review] young journalists asked to create their dream newspaper wanted

more point-of-view writing in news columns.’’ 85

A whole generation of Americans

who came of age in the age of the Internet and fed on the staples of talk radio and

‘‘shout TV’’ on cable wanted more.

The emergence of ‘‘fact-checking’’ as a subgenre of journalism is also a testament

to the influence of alternative journalistic practice in the performance of corporate

media organizations. Fact-checking politicians*and the news media* was once the exclusive preserve of reportorial practices that fell outside the orbit of ‘‘objective’’

journalism: alternative journalism, right-wing blogging, and the news practices of a

whole host of nonconformist groups who have found themselves on the margins of

mainstream journalism. However, with the rising reach and importance of the

blogosphere and the shame it has put the mainstream media to (such as during the

Trent Lott affair and the Dan Rather scandal, among others) the corporate news

media, especially cable TV news, have jettisoned the traditional neutrality that

objective journalism demanded of journalists. This move started with the rise of such

corporate media reportorial practices as investigative journalism, interpretive

journalism, and precision journalism, but has found full realization in the

proliferation of ‘‘truth squads,’’ ‘‘truth-o-meters,’’ ‘‘Pinocchio trackers,’’ etc. in news

organizations where journalists are no longer mere detached, disinterested vessels

through which news passed or, as Ryan put it, people who present ‘‘only two sides of

an issue or event without assessing the veracity of each side,’’ 86

but engaged

commentators who call out distortions and intentional falsehoods by politicians.

In the same vein, many commercialized news media concerns, increasingly, now

make little effort to conceal their ideological biases in both news coverage and

News with Views 59

commentary. For instance, like early 19th-century American newspapers, the Fox

News Network has transmuted, for all practical purposes, into the unofficial media

organ of the Republican Party. The Republican Party sets the network’s agenda as

much as it sets the agenda of the party. David Frum, former President George W.

Bush’s one-time speechwriter, captured it best when he said, ‘‘Republicans originally

thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.’’ 87

Fox

News also actively promoted, supported, and recruited for the rightwing Tea Party

Movement and even called out other media organizations for not following in its

footsteps. The organization clearly stepped outside the bounds of merely

‘‘informing’’ its viewers to ‘‘mobilizing’’ them, from being a mere ‘‘source of

information’’ to being a ‘‘facilitator of social communication,’’ and from being a

detached conduit for the dissemination of information to being purveyors of

‘‘mobilizing information,’’ ‘‘information for action,’’ or ‘‘action on action’’*all hitherto the exclusive reportorial singularities of the alternative media formation.

Many media critics have also noted that MSNBC has positioned itself since 2007 as

the antithesis of Fox News and has been accused of being ‘‘an organ of the

Democratic National Committee.’’ 88

So in more ways than one, the mainstream

media are returning to their partisan roots while adopting key features of

alternative media practice in the process.

However, as I have pointed out earlier, the mimicking of alternative media

counterhegemonic reportorial practices by the corporate media is often actuated not

by benevolent, progressive motives but by the imperatives of hegemonic cooptation

of potentially threatening citizen media and by profit motive. The larger implication

of all this is that the relationship between alternative media and the mainstream

media in the age of the Internet will increasingly be one of symbiosis rather than

mutual exclusivity. Most online alternative media liberally use material from the

mainstream media (mostly for subversive purposes), just as the mainstream media

now increasingly utilize information from alternative citizen media for its profit-

driven broadcasts. 89

This signals the birth of postobjectivism in mainstream

reportorial practices and the erasure of the distinctiveness of alternative media

practices. Thus, we may very well be witnessing the most effective hegemonic

containment of the alternative media formation in history. This development has real

consequences for the role, conception, and future of journalism and for the nature,

contours, and strategic rituals of emancipatory politics.

With the increasing cooptation of the voices and wisdom of the crowd in the

newsgathering business*propelled in large part by the growth of a surfeit of citizen media outlets, the emergence of crowd-powered ‘‘social stories’’ and ‘‘social news

wires,’’ the progressive loss of the agenda-setting power of the traditional media to

social media actors and to communities of ‘‘intelligent contributors’’ to news sites* we may be witnessing the permanent reconfiguration of the role of the traditional

journalist. Journalism will no longer just be a record of the chaos of occurrences

around us; it will now increasingly be a conversation between the sources of news and

the audiences for news, but our habitual notion of ‘‘source’’ and ‘‘audience’’ will be

dislocated to take account of the progressively massive citizen input in newsgathering

60 F. A. Kperogi

and the blurring of the boundaries between the witness of the news and the reporters

of the news. As Lavrusik points out, in response to these changes, traditional

journalists may be reduced to being managers of news conversations or curators of

news for a ‘‘time-poor audience.’’ 90

This may signal the death of the professional

journalist as we know it.

Similarly, since the reportorial singularities that stood out alternative media

practices are now coopted and adopted by the corporate media, which were supposed

to be the antipode of alternative media, the alternative journalistic formation will

gradually be rendered indistinguishable from mainstream journalism. Alternative

media practitioners either have to infiltrate the increasingly more open discursive

spaces provided by the corporate media and subvert them from within or devise

alternative rhetorical and reportorial strategies to distinguish themselves from the

mainstream. Whatever it is, the in the era of postobjectivism, the thesis of traditional

journalism has merged with the antithesis of alternative journalism to produce a

synthesis that is both traditional journalism and alternative journalism. It will be

interesting to watch if this synthesis will constitute a new thesis that will fertilize the

germination of a new antithesis.

Notes

[1] See, for instance, David L. Altheide, Creating Reality: How TV News Distorts Events (Beverly

Hills, CA: Sage, 1976); Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from

Women’s Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Helen E. Longino, Science as

Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1990); Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese, Mediating the Message:

Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content (New York: Longman, 1991).

[2] See, for example, Michael Graham, ‘‘Election 2008: Objective Journalism the Loser,’’ The

Boston Herald, last modified October 28, 2008, http://www.bostonherald.com/news/

opinion/letters/view.bg?articleid�1128260&format�text. [3] Michael Ryan, ‘‘Journalistic Ethics, Objectivity, Existential Journalism, Standpoint

Epistemology, and Public Journalism,’’ Journal of Mass Media Ethics 6, no. 1 (2001), 6.

[4] Andrew Porwancher, ‘‘Objectivity’s Prophet: Adolph S. Ochs and the New York Times,

1896�1935,’’ Journalism History 34, no. 4 (2011): 186. [5] Michael Schudson, ‘‘The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism,’’ Journalism: Theory,

Practice and Criticism 2, no. 2 (2001): 149�70. [6] Charles E. Clark and Charles Wetherell, ‘‘The Measure of Maturity: The Pennsylvania

Gazette, 1728�1765,’’ William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 46 (1989): 292. [7] Schudson, ‘‘The Objectivity Norm.’’

[8] Ibid., 155.

[9] The Virginia Free Press, for instance, wrote on its front page: ‘‘It is stated in the New York

papers that CHARLES DICKENS, decidedly the most popular author of the day, intends

visiting the United States during the month of January next,’’ See Virginia Free Press

[Charlestown, WV], col. A, November 4, 1841 (Issue 41).

[10] Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (1842), ed. Patricia Ingham

(London: Penguin, 2000), 268.

[11] Ibid., 33.

[12] Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel, ‘‘Are Watchdogs an Endangered Species?’’ Columbia

Journalism Review 40, no. 1 (2001): 50�53.

News with Views 61

[13] Richard Kaplan, ‘‘The News About New Institutionalism: Journalism’s Ethic of Objectivity

and Its Political Origins,’’ Political Communication 23 (2006): 173�85. [14] Ibid., 179.

[15] Porwancher, ‘‘Objectivity’s Prophet.’’

[16] For a detailed discussion, see Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of

American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Dan Schiller, Objectivity and the

News: The Public and the Rise of Commercial Journalism (Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Gerald Baldasty and Jeffry Rutenbeck, ‘‘Money, Politics and

Newspapers: The Business Environment of Press Partisanship in the Late 19th Century,’’

Journalism History 15, no. 2/3 (1988): 60�69; Donald W. Curl, Murat Halstead and the Cincinnati Commercial (Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1980); Gerald

Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century (Madison: University of

Wisconsin Press, 1992); Ryan, ‘‘Journalistic Ethics.’’

[17] Daniel C. Hallin, ‘‘The Media, the War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the

Thesis of an Oppositional Media,’’ Journal of Politics 46, no. 1 (1984): 2�23. [18] Richard L. Kaplan, ‘‘The Origins of Objectivity in American Journalism,’’ in The Routledge

Companion to News and Journalism Studies, ed. Stuart Allan (New York: Routledge Press,

2010), 26.

[19] See, for instance, Altheide, Creating Reality; John C. Merrill, ‘‘Journalistic Objectivity is Not

Possible,’’ in Basic Issues in Mass Communication: A Debate, eds. Everette E. Dennis and

John C. Merrill (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 104�10; Robert Hackett, ‘‘Decline of a Paradigm? Bias and Objectivity in New Media Studies,’’ Critical Studies in Mass

Communication 1, (1984): 229�59; Meera Nanda, ‘‘The Epistemic Charity of the Social Constructivist Critics of Science and Why the Third World Should Refuse the Offer,’’ in A

House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science, ed. Noretta Koertge (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 286�311. [20] Nanda, ‘‘Epistemic Charity.’’

[21] Meenakshi G. Durham, ‘‘On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of

Journalism: The Case for ‘Strong Objectivity,’’’ Communication Theory 8 (1998): 125�26. [22] John Fiske, ‘‘British Cultural Studies and Television,’’ in Channels of Discourse, Reassembled,

ed. Robert C. Allen (London: Routledge, 1992), 290�95. [23] Janet Woollacott, ‘‘Messages and Meanings,’’ in Culture Society and the Media, eds. Michael

Gurevitch, James Curran and Janet Woollacott (London: Methuen, 1982), 109.

[24] John C. Merrill and Ralph L. Lowenstein, Media, Messages, and Men: New Perspectives in

Communication 2nd ed., (New York: Longman, 1979), 214.

[25] Tanni Haas, ‘‘Alternative Media, Public Journalism and the Pursuit of Democratization,’’

Journalism Studies 5 (2004): 115�21. [26] Jennifer Rauch, ‘‘Activists as Interpretive Communities: Rituals of Consumption and

Interaction in an Alternative Media Environment,’’ Media, Culture & Society 29, no. 6

(2007): 994�1013. [27] Robert Hackett, ‘‘Is Peace Journalism Possible?’’ Conflict and Communication Online 5, no. 2

(2006): 9.

[28] See Chris Atton, ‘‘Alternative Media in Scotland: Problems, Positions and ‘Product,’’’

Critical Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2000): 40�47; Chris Atton, Alternative Media (London: Sage, 2001); Villarreal V. Ford and Geneve Gil, ‘‘Radical Internet Use,’’ in Radical Media:

Rebellious Communication and Social Movements, ed. John D. Browning (Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage, 2001), 201�34; Chris Atton, ‘‘Towards a Cultural Study of Alternative Media on the Internet,’’ Southern Review 35, no. 3 (2002): 52�62; Chris Atton, ‘‘News Cultures and New Social Movements: Radical Journalism and Mainstream Media,’’ Journalism Studies 3,

(2002) 491�505; Chris Atton, ‘‘What is ‘Alternative’ Journalism?’’ Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 4, no. 3 (2003): 267�72; John D. Downing, ‘‘Audiences and Readers of Alternative Media: The Absent Lure of the Virtually Unknown,’’ Media, Culture & Society

62 F. A. Kperogi

25, (2003): 625�65; Sara Platon and Mark Deuze, ‘‘Indymedia Journalism. A Radical Way of Making, Selecting and Sharing News?’’ Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 4, (2003):

336�55; Haas, ‘‘Alternative Media’’; Chris Atton and Emma Wickenden, ‘‘Sourcing Routines and Representation in Alternative Journalism: A Case Study Approach,’’ Journalism Studies

6, (2005): 347�59; Eun-Gyoo Kim and James Hamilton, ‘‘Capitulation to Capital? OhmyNews as Alternative Media,’’ Media, Culture & Society 28, no. 4 (2006): 541�60.

[29] Atton, ‘‘Towards a Cultural Study.’’

[30] See John D. Downing, Radical Media: The Political Experience of Alternative Communication

(Boston: South End Press, 1984).

[31] Atton, ‘‘Towards a Cultural Study,’’ 492.

[32] See Atton, 2001, Alternative Media; Downing, Radical Media; DeeDee Halleck, Hand Held

Visions: The Impossible Possibilities of Community Media (New York: Fordham University

Press, 2002); Clemencia Rodriguez, Fissures in the Mediascape: An International Study of

Citizens’ Media (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2001); Rodger Streitmatter, Voices of

Revolution: The Dissident Press in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

[33] See Atton, ‘‘Alternative Media in Scotland’’; Patricia Gibbs and James Hamilton, ‘‘Special

Issue of Media History: Alternative Media,’’ Media History 7, no. 2 (2001): 117�18; Dorothy Kidd and Bernadette Barker-Plummer, ‘‘Social Justice Movements and the Internet,’’ Special

Issue, Peace Review 13, no. 3 (2001): 331�37; Graeme Turner, ed., ‘‘Citizens’ Media,’’ Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy (2002): 103.

[34] Gibbs and Hamilton, ‘‘Alternative Media,’’ 117.

[35] Vincent Campbell, Information Age Journalism: Journalism in an International Context

(London: Arnold, 2004), 178.

[36] See Karol Jacubowicz, ‘‘Musical Chairs? The Three Public Spheres of Poland,’’ Media Culture

& Society 12, (1990): 195�212; David Sholle, ‘‘Access Through Activism: Extending the Ideas of Negt and Kluge to American Alternative Media Practice,’’ Javnost*The Public 2, no. 4 (1995): 21�35; Michael R. Evans, ‘‘Hegemony and Discourse: Negotiating Cultural Relationships through Media Production,’’ Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 3, no. 3

(2002): 309�29. [37] Gibbs and Hamilton, ‘‘Alternative Media,’’ 117.

[38] Campbell, Information Age Journalism.

[39] Downing, Radical Media, 45.

[40] James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: The Press, Broadcasting, and

New Media in Britain (London: Routledge, 2003), 16.

[41] Tony Harcup, ‘‘The Unspoken Said: The Journalism of Alternative Media,’’ Journalism 4, no.

3 (2003): 372.

[42] James Hamilton, ‘‘Alternative Media: Conceptual Difficulties, Critical Possibilities,’’ Journal

of Communication Inquiry 24, no. 4 (2000): 357/8.

[43] Haas, ‘‘Alternative Media,’’ 115.

[44] Downing, Radical Media.

[45] Atton, Alternative Media.

[46] John Hochheimer, ‘‘Organizing Democratic Radio: Issues in Practice,’’ Media, Culture &

Society 15, no. 4 (1993): 473.

[47] Atton, Alternative Media.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Kenya Tomaselli and Eric Louw, ‘‘Alternative Press and Political Practice: The South African

Struggle,’’ in Communication for and against Democracy, ed. Marc Raboy and Peter Bruck,

(Montreal: Black Rose, 1990), 213.

[50] Haas, ‘‘Alternative Media,’’ 116.

[51] Atton, Alternative Media, 154.

[52] Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1996), 379.

News with Views 63

[53] Brian Whitaker, News Limited: Why You Can’t Read All about It (London: Minority Press

Group, 1981), 105.

[54] Simon Cottle, ‘‘Rethinking News Access,’’ Journalism Studies 1, no. 3 (2000): 433.

[55] Ibid., 434�35. [56] Chris Atton, ‘‘Ethical Issues in Alternative Journalism,’’ in Communication Ethics Today, ed.

Richard Keeble (Leicester: Troubadour, 2005), 22.

[57] Nick Couldry, The Place of Media Power: Pilgrims and Witnesses in the Media Age (London:

Routledge, 2000).

[58] John D. Peters, ‘‘Witnessing,’’ Media, Culture & Society 23, (2001): 707.

[59] Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times

(New York: New Press, 2000), 49.

[60] Ibid., 110.

[61] Atton, Alternative Media, 11.

[62] Tony Harcup, ‘‘‘I’m Doing This to Change the World’: Journalism in Alternative and

Mainstream Media,’’ Journalism Studies 6, no. 3 (2005): 362.

[63] Downing, Radical Media.

[64] Ibid., ix.

[65] Chris Atton, ‘‘Ethical Issues in Alternative Journalism,’’ Ethical Space: The International

Journal of Communication Ethics, 1 no. 1 (2003), 26�27. [66] Harcup, ‘‘‘I’m Doing This to Change the World,’’’ 362.

[67] Public or civic journalism is the kind of journalism that actively seeks the input of the

reading or viewing public in the newsgathering process.

[68] David Bauder, ‘‘Web Has Unexpected Effect on Journalism,’’ USA Today, last modified

March 17, 2008, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-17-3511532335_x.

htm.

[69] Jay Rosen, What Are Journalists For? (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

[70] Farooq A. Kperogi, ‘‘Cooperation with the Corporation? CNN and the Hegemonic

Cooptation of Citizen Journalism through iReport.com,’’ New Media & Society 13, no. 2

(2011): 316.

[71] Joyce Nip, ‘‘Exploring the Second Phase of Public Journalism,’’ Journalism Studies 7, no. 2

(2006): 216.

[72] Atton, ‘‘Ethical Issues in Alternative Journalism,’’ 22.

[73] Louise Woodstock, ‘‘Public Journalism’s Talking Cure: An Analysis of the Movement’s

‘Problem’ and ‘Solution’ Narratives,’’ Journalism: Theory Practice and Criticism 3, no. 1

(2002): 37.

[74] Kperogi, ‘‘Cooperation with the Corporation?’’ 319.

[75] Jay Rosen, ‘‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience,’’ PressThink: Ghost of Democracy

in the Media Machine, last modified on June 27, 2006, http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/

weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html

[76] J.D. Lasica, ‘‘Blogs and Journalism Need Each Other,’’ Nieman Reports 70�4, last modified September 8, 2008, http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/03-3NRfall/V57N3.pdf, 70.

[77] Couldry, The Place of Media Power:

[78] Jeff Howe, ‘‘The Rise of Crowdsourcing,’’ Wired, June 14, 2006, http://www.wired.com/

wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html.

[79] Jeff Howe, ‘‘Gannett to Crowdsource News,’’ Wired, November 3, 2006, http://www.wired.

com/software/webservices/news/2006/11/72067?currentPage�1. [80] Ibid.

[81] Martin Bell, ‘‘The Journalism of Attachment,’’ in Media Ethics, ed. Matthew Kieran

(London: Routledge, 1998), 15�22. [82] Cecilia Friend and Jane B. Singer, Online Journalism Ethics: Traditions and Transitions

(New York: ME Sharpe, 2007), 139.

[83] Ibid., 136.

64 F. A. Kperogi

[84] Quoted in Friend and Singer, Online Journalism Ethics.

[85] Brent Cunningham, ‘‘Rethinking Objectivity,’’ Columbia Journalism Review. July/August,

(2003), 5.

[86] Ryan, ‘‘Journalistic Ethics,’’ 7.

[87] David Schoetz, ‘‘David Frum on GOP: Now We Work for Fox,’’ ABC News, last modified

March 23, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2010/03/david-frum-on-gop-now-

we-work-for-fox/.

[88] Howard Kurtz, ‘‘MSNBC, Leaning Left and Getting Flak from Both Sides,’’ Washington Post,

last modified May 28, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/

05/27/AR2008052703047_pf.html.

[89] Tanni Haas, ‘‘From ‘Public Journalism’ to the ‘Public’s Journalism’? Rhetoric and Reality in

the Discourse on Weblogs,’’ Journalism Studies 6, no. 3 (2005): 387�96. [90] Vadim Lavrusik, ‘‘The Future of Social Media in Journalism,’’ Mashable.com, last modified

September 13, 2010, http://mashable.com/2010/09/13/future-social-media-journalism/.

News with Views 65

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