Kelby Carr

I sort of laughed/cried to read about some silly nonsense Geek Wars between Wired and Techcrunch in Techcrunch’s post, “ OK, Wired, Let’s Do This!” In essence, Wired (interestingly enough, the Old School journalist in this scenario) has attacked the Techcrunch blog ( new media), which formed a partnership with the Washington Post (so damn old school it is actually fossilizing as I type). This irks Wired, whose writer Betsy Schiffman wrote:

“We’ve got nothing against TechCrunch, but it seems crazy-crazy to us that the Washington Post, a paper known for the sort of reporting that can take down U.S. presidents, is publishing content written by a dude who invests in the companies he writes about. But what do we know.”

First of all, I want to make a point. This is an important one, so do pay close attention. This is tied so closely to why I’m embarassed for journalism that it just isn’t even funny. This is tied to why I left the business after 15 years. This is why, despite loving and adoring the kind of investigative journalism that moves mountains, I gave up on that passion. This is why people don’t even bother reading newspapers anymore.

When was the last time the Post, or any paper for that matter, did anything remotely as significant as take down a U.S. President? Oh, yes. In the 1970s. Thank you.

This is just a case of old school vs. new media in my opinion. For years, journalists have obsessed about being unbiased. It’s been banned, disallowed, the worst thing humanly possible for a journalist to do.

Here’s the problem with that plan. First of all, everyone is biased. Yeah, I said it. You can report and write fairly, but you can’t be a robot. Sorry, guys.

Second of all, and this is the really amusing and interesting part, no one cares! Little did they realize, and blogger popularity now proves, readers don’t care IF you are biased. They just want to know how, full disclosure.

In fact, the popularity of bloggers simply proves people like bias, they want bias. They want to find people with the same bias, because they believe them more. They want to find people with the opposite bias so they can get really mad and leave nasty comments.

They want humans, not journalists. So even though this is an insignificant spat between two sources of news, it speaks volumes of a larger issue that old school journalism just isn’t facing. We don’t care if you’re biased. So what? We’re biased, you’re biased.

Just use full disclosure, don’t be sneaky, and write fairly. Be upfront. And for crying out loud, don’t be afraid to write boldly, without censure and without falling to the whims of advertisers, government officials.

We don’t really care if your journalist is a liberal or conservative (well, I don’t), as long as they say so. I care a lot more whether you’re axing stories because the newspaper’s publisher is buddies with the mayor, or an advertiser squawks about an unflattering biz story. I care when bias stops real stories from being told, no matter who’s telling it.

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Deb Ng of Freelance Writing Gigs recently had a great post, “ Print vs. Web: Why the Two Will Never Be the Same.” It’s still interesting to me, even in this era of Web Content as King, how many people still think a writer only goes for web to get a career started (or as a last resort).

People are usually pretty surprised when they hear my print experience (yeah, I’ve written for pretty much every print medium). I did 15 years hard time as a newspaper reporter, and I have written for national magazines and even did a book (only to be told after I was done that there’s not a big enough market for the corner of France and Spain I wrote about).

I finally cut the cord entirely with print a couple years ago, and I’ve never looked back. I still to this day talk with journalists and freelance writers who still see print as The Ultimate, particularly a sweet spread in a major national mag. Or they think a book is The End All, Be All. Usually, they say it’s just because they “like to see their name in print.” Um, OK. Print that web page then.

Personally, I have been doing the nasty, naughty web writing thing on the side for a long time. Instead of it just being a dirty little habit, it’s finally grown to the point where you can make a buck and focus on web writing.

I don’t have to cover night meetings about which chair the local goverment should buy, or churn out daily junk 8-inchers for well over 40 hours, just on the off chance they might actually let me have a spare 10 minutes a week to work on a real investigative piece on something that matters.

I don’t have to waste 90 percent of my time begging magazine editors to think about thinking about letting me write for them. Oh, and hey it would be really cool if you pay me for that piece sometime this decade.

Now when I want to write, like now, I just write. Instant gratification. And if I want to see my name in print, I click “print.” Done.

_{Photo © Rodolfo Clix on stock.xchng.}

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