Challenging traditional journalism

"Rebooting the News," featuring Gawker reporter Ryan Tate"Rebooting the News" is among the better-known podcasts devoted to the convergence of journalism, technology and the reshaping of communication.

I listen weekly, but it's a love-hate affair. Hosts Jay Rosen and Dave Winer can be variously intriguing and grating throughout a 45-minute podcast. Rosen is a journalism professor at NYU and Winer is a programmer best known as editor of Scripting News.

They're intriguing because they bring fresh thinking to journalism and communication. But they can be incredibly ignorant of basic business requirements to fund or maintain even bare-bones journalism efforts so the concept of "rebooting the news" sometimes comes across as a hollow promise. And for people highlighting new forms of communication, they've made absolutely no effort to figure out how to control audio levels after 66 episodes (I'm constantly adjusting the volume control because their levels are rarely in sync).

But to the good news: Episode 66 was one of the best yet, thanks to guest Ryan Tate, a reporter for Gawker Media. The 45 minutes are worth a listen for anyone interested in journalism and challenging tradition.

Highlights for me were:

• A look at why Tate and Gawker disdain "access journalism," which has powered traditional media for decades. Instead, they report not to protect sources but to get the story. It's a dynamic fraught with risks and rewards. It'd be worth another episode to have Tate, a newspaper veteran, compare the pros and cons of the two styles of reporting.
• How Gawker founder Nick Denton launched the idea of a new breed of news sites that are known for aggressive, non traditional coverage.
• How AOL and Yahoo are diving headfirst into original content. They're among the few major media companies hiring journalists, and it'll be interesting to see whether that's the magic pill that will turn around their fortunes. Given that Yahoo and AOL are ailing and taking the same path, talk that both may merge makes a lot of sense.
• Details on a few of Tate's favorite stories in recent years, including "Antennagate."
• The eye-raising reason New York Times reporter left for Huffington Post. I tweeted about this recently but I think more reporters will be following suit, looking for the freedom to tell stories without the "fair and balanced" rules that have guided newspapers in recent decades. 

Whether you agree or disagree with the approaches Tate and Gawker are taking, their efforts raise good questions about what role traditional journalism can and should play in an age when the rules are being rewritten daily. For me, it's not a question of either/or but layering new approaches to coverage onto the foundations of trust and fairness that newspapers have worked hard to earn over the years.

Update on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 at 11:00 PM by Logan Molen

I mentioned in my initial post my love-hate relationship with "Rebooting the News." Well, this week's episode is an exercise in madness. Dave Winer goes all loco with guest Saul Hansell about how The New York Times has allegedly screwed up the Interweb. The diatribe got the point Jay Rosen has to interrupt Winer and say, "Let the man speak!"

Listen in only if you're someone who slows for car wrecks.

This is 45 minutes I can't get back.