Monday, November 9, 2009

Flu, craps and fake photos

I tip my toque to bloggers with full-time jobs who keep up their ramblings in the midst of a flu outbreak.

My newsroom had casualties, and we’ve never been so busy -- and so efficient. We’re a mixed bag of talkers and doers, and it turns out the talkers were rendered mute by sore throats. With that heavy layer of administration out of the way, reporters have been producing more and better work.

There appears to be another wave of layoffs in media. With my own newsroom in mind, I find myself hopeful that our chaff might being separated from the wheat. An opinion piece on The Globe website reminds me of the bigger picture. As media hemorrhages staff, we're losing the ability to fight the onslaught of supplied photos and information. We're guilty of blindly posting information that's supplied to us, although that has stopped for a time thanks to the flu bug, not good judgment.

Stephen Harper’s team is busy releasing heroic photos of him, including the infamous kinder, gentler leader performing on the piano during a gala last month. His handlers apologized for releasing wrong information when it was learned the photo was taken during a rehearsal, although they’ve never corrected the cutline.

http://tinyurl.com/yct4mwg

More people are receiving or distributing news through blogs that rely on supplied photos and information, but they don't challenge what’s being fed to them. Government and business supply photos all the time. The difference is now they know media are losing the workforce they need to challenge this information.

They hold all the cards while we're losing our players.

The Hyper Journalist

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