Saturday, April 7, 2012

Why Bob Woodward is wrong about the internet and journalism

gigaom reporting:
Anyone who has followed the media for the past half century or so knows that Bob Woodward is a giant in the field, one half of the legendary investigative team of Woodward and Bernstein — a man who helped to bring down a U.S. president and defined a generational shift in the practice of journalism. In other words, someone whose opinions on the craft of journalism are probably worth listening to. But should we believe him when he argues that the internet is not really of any benefit when it comes to stories like Watergate? Not necessarily. As with any field that has undergone the kind of disruption the media has, the journalism of today is very different from the kind that Woodward defined 40 years ago — and arguably better.
Woodward, who has been a reporter and editor at the Washington Post since 1971, was reunited with his investigative sidekick Carl Bernstein earlier this week at a meeting of the American Society of News Editors, as part of a panel at the conference entitled “Watergate 4.0: How Would the Story Unfold in the Digital Age?” Woodward’s view seemed to be that younger newspaper reporters and journalism students have a misplaced faith in the power of the internet, and that what really counts (not surprising perhaps) is good old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting and personal interviews...
http://gigaom.com/2012/04/06/why-bob-woodward-is-wrong-about-the-internet-and-journalism/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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