Reporters up for adoption

Over the weekend a little dust devil of discussion sprang up over the idea of bloggers “adopting” reporters. Jay Rosen has the summation here

The idea is for a blogger to latch onto a byline of a reporter who covers a topic dear to the bloggers’ heart, and to become a one-person journalism review with the idea of getting coverage more friendly to, say, Howard Dean. (I put Dean in there because his online acolytes find every syllable mentioned for or against him, and link to it. Great for the hit count.)

It’s amusing that all these bloggers who imagine themselves savvy observers of the news media know so little about how the job’s done. They seem to assume that because Reporter X has the byline, Reporter X has done all the work. Never mind that assigning editors decide which stories get assigned, copy editors write heads that determine if the stories get read, photographers and graphic artists determine how to make the story visual, designers decide how the story meshes with its surroundings … and that’s just in the newsroom.

Not that I’m against the idea of bloggers of bloggers finding a beat to cover … it sure beats talking about their inscrutable cats, insufferable bosses, elusive love interests… (and, ahem, trying to blog playoff games in real time).

Bloggers adopting journalists could be the best thing that happens to journalism, because it creates a class of people who elevate the perceived importance of journalism. In the same way that sports coverage is as important as the games themselves, blog coverage of the news could actually reignite the attention of a public that, by and large, tunes out the press.

Mind you this will result in journalists talking in platitudes to the bloggers just like pro athletes and coaches do to the press, but even a press that regards bloggers as a necessary evil will nevertheless see them as necessary, which is a step up from where we are now.