Not a Journalist

I’ll say this as often as people will listen: Eric Rice makes great points. Sometimes, the point he’s making spins my thoughts off in a direction that’s not where he was heading. Or maybe I’m the percentage of Eric’s readership who thought, “Hey cool! Give me free stuff!” Whatever the case, I’m taking his post and moving it to my direction.

I am Not a Journalist

I write this because I never want to have to be held to the rigor and the quality of effort that a professional journalist holds themselves to, for our sakes, and for the sake of creating believability. I respect the profession of journalist, and I know a few that I consider wonderful and amazing people. You’re thinking about all the hacks and bad journalists you know, but you know what? There are hacks and losers in every business. It just turns out that journalists have more access to people than those other types. Think about that a second. Right? People in your office might not be the best at what they do, but they’re not pushing things out through the megaphone of media.

So, let’s say this: I respect journalists. I’m not a journalist.

Integrity Standards

This goes towards the integrity thing. I think people confuse “professional journalist” with the stamp of integrity. I tell you what: there are some great practices around integrity that lots of bloggers, videobloggers, podcasters and other new media types should be working to uphold. If you’re a political blogger of whichever stripe, I’d much prefer that you report with a certain level of professionalism and believability.

Ditto product reviewers. When I learned all that went into “staying clean” at CNET (and you argue if you disagree- I think CNET does great product reviews), I was really impressed. It gave me a sense of comfort. I felt like I’d believe the reviewers until I was proven wrong, and that’s how I feel now. Ditto Engadget and some of the other biggies.

But me?

I’m No Less Believable

Unless you choose to disbelieve. I’m going to tell you what I think. If I’m ever lucky enough to have someone like Nikon lobbing me D40 cameras or an N95 phone, I’ll tell you. I’ll say, “They asked me to try it out and talk about it.” And that’s that.

I’m not going to hold myself to professional reviewers’ policies on [chrisbrogan.com]. It’s just not what this site is about. I’m just a guy writing about what excites me. Should I choose to talk about products, I will always talk about them from the perspective of what I like and don’t like about them, how they might be useful, what I wish were done differently.

I don’t cover politics, so you can only get that through my rare post that accidentally betrays the occasional hint at who I think is interesting.

Are Bloggers Journalists?

The ones who set themselves up to be journalists are, or might be, or at least aspire to hold themselves to those standards.

Me, I’m writing stuff that might be interesting, prove useful, make you think, etc.

Is that enough?