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Dana Davidsen: How do you define online journalism?
SS: Online journalism (as opposed to print-oriented journalism that shows up online) is reporting and analysis geared toward a current, engaged and interactive online audience.
DD: When and why did you become involved in online journalism? Or, what involvement, if any, do you have in online journalism?
SS: My freelancing career naturally led toward online outlets which were more receptive to out-of-the-blue pitches and young journalists.
DD: Do you see an online journalist different from a blogger?
SS: They are like a venn diagram with two overlapping circles. A blogger has a unique brand identity, a regular audience and a home base. An online journalist might be a blogger, but they might also be someone who writes for many different outlets or reports news, more like a traditional newspaper reporter or critic.
DD: The Society of Professional Journalists has a Code of Ethics that says journalists should be accountable for unethical practices, objectivity, mistakes in reporting, etc. Does this describe online journalism?
SS: Yes, with modifications. Online journalists are more concerned with time. Smaller errors or holes in information (such as a source not returning phone calls) may not prevent a piece from being published. An online piece may be updated several times as new information comes in. Furthermore, more and more online journalism has lost that authoritative-objective tone that newspapers strive for, instead aimed at a niche audience with a recognizable voice and perspective.
So the rules are slightly different. But since there's plenty of unethical bogus objectivity coming from traditional news sources, I think that's quite all right.
DD: What do you believe are gender differences, if any, in journalism?
SS: I think women journalists are often shunted, or self-segregate to cover women's issues or more feature and lifestyle issues. And those topics are given secondary weight because they are of interest to women, so it's sort of a vicious cycle.
Many traditional workplaces still suffer from a patriarchal culture--both my high school and college newspapers certainly did. Male bloggers occasionally whine that there aren't enough female bloggers covering politics--but that's because because they don't count blogs that tackle politics from a feminist perspective as political blogs. Essentially, the same kinds of leftover trickles of misogyny that affect most professions dog journalism as well. But women journalists are organized and proactive and interested in investigating their own situation, so that puts us at an advantage compared to women in other fields.
DD: What do you see as the overall future for journalism?
SS: News outlets will continue to shift from general-interest to serving specific niches, either demographic or geographic. There will be less money available which will be bad for the already pathetic diversity in the ranks of professional journalists. But blogging and online technology like youtube will allow more voices to break through, and those media will also continue to be effective at holding powerful entities accountable with the facts. Eventually, more journalists will write as a hobby or a part-time job, but the profession will survive.
Those are my guesses. However, all this could be wrong!
Interviewee: Sarah Seltzer
Sarah Seltzer is a freelance journalist and book critic living in New York City. Currently, she writes a column about gender and pop culture for RH Reality Check, which is an online information source for reproductive and sexual health. Her most recent article appearing on rhrealitycheck.org is titled "‘No Fat Talk’ Week: Cutting Fat Talk from Our Verbal Diets”, and consists of an analytical commentary on women’s tendency to obsess over body weight. Seltzer also writes for Bitch Magazine, an online publication that focuses on women’s opinions of popular culture. Her most notable contribution to this Web site is her critique of the popular reality television show, “Beauty and The Geek”. Seltzer’s article, “The (Girl) Geek Stands Alone”, examines the glorification of a woman’s appearance as opposed to her intellect and how this standard is reversed when in regards to men. She graduated with honors from Harvard, and proceeded to intern at an online news source called Women’s eNews and teach at a public school in the Bronx (Five Boroughs of New York City). Now, in between her journalistic writing, Seltzer works on her first novel and continues to teach high school students in New York City. Her writing is also featured in news sources such as Publishers Weekly, Venus Zine, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, TheNation.com, MotherJones.com, The New York Press and the Los Angeles Times.
Interviewer: Dana Davidsen
Dana Davidsen is an undergraduate Journalism and Mass Communication major at The University of Iowa. She grew up in Libertyville, IL, a northern suburb of Chicago. Davidsen is also on University scholarship on the Women’s Swim Team. She swims the 100 and 200 Breastroke and the 200 Individual Medley. She aspires to have a career in either public relations, broadcasting or journalism, and hopes that whichever career path she takes will allow her to travel throughout the world. Davidsen finds that gender as it relates to mass media is interesting because of its relevancy to basically every facet of today’s culture.
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The Gender and Mass Media class is taught by Pamela Creedon. Prof. Creedon is the former director of School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Iowa, and former director at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State University. Active in feminist scholarship, Creedon served as an editor of The Edge of Change: Women in the 21st Century Press published by the University of Illinois Press (2009). Previously, she served as editor of Women in Mass Communication: Challenging Gender Values by Sage (2007, 1994, 1989). She is also an editor of Seeking Equity for Women in Journalism and Mass Communication: A 30-Year Update published by (2004) and is the editor of Women, Media and Sport published by Sage (1994).