In-Class Response to Blogging

There are so many issues to address in the digital media revolution that it becomes overwhelming to try to envision the future of journalism. One issue that is constantly under scrutiny is the concept of ownership. Digital technology makes it possible to easily plagiarize ideas or sample other people's creations. Information can be copied and shared very quickly and easily. Creative commons allows people to share their work and a new genre of art has been created, called interactive art, where several people can contribute to one creation. As far as journalism is concerned, publications have always taken ideas from other publications. Pretty much as soon as one organization breaks a story, the other organizations follow their lead and write about the same topic, occasionally from a different angle. On the Internet it is even more difficult to be the first to break the story, but it is easier to find a good idea and give your own take on it. Basically, I don't think there's a lot of original ideas that exist anymore anyway. Isn't the point of news journalism to take what someone else says and report it, while giving them credit, of course. It is our job to write what someone else says to us. Of course we still need copyrights, but as long as I get paid, I don't care so much about the ownership of the idea. Of course, I wouldn't want someone to take something I wrote and say they wrote it, either. The open source of the internet is somewhat intimidating and scary, but I don't know enough about regulations to comprehend a solution to the problem.
Which brings me to Jeff Jarvis' blog. His post, "FTC regulates our speech," was very interesting. I agree that most people who use the internet do not think of themselves as writers, responsible for the things they endorse or critique. There is a very difficult conflict between protection of ownership rights and freedom of speech. I don't know what an answer is to the balance of that, but I don't think there should be government regulation. It seems to me that this is why journalism students study ethics. Trained writers understand the dilemma of disclosure, and learn to consider all sides of a situation before making an ethical decision. I thought it was interesting when Jarvis mentioned taking freebies for writing about things like food. Overall, I think this is a cloudy area that will only be solved when journalism organizations come up with an effective business model.