Ditch the journalistic xenophobia

I'm sitting here in the lobby of Stanford's Arrillaga Center, desperately trying to wake my brain up with caffeine before I get up in front of a lot of people at the SEJ2007 lunchtime plenary and open my mouth. I'm on a plenary panel at 1:30, "Toward a New Journalism."

My fellow panelists will be:

• David Ledford, executive editor, The News Journal (Wilmington, DE)
• Tom Murphy, founder and editor in chief, Redwood Age
• Vikki Porter, director, Knight New Media Center, pictured below (she just stopped by)
   
• Paul Rogers, environment writer, San Jose Mercury News
• Moderator: Judy Muller, j-prof from USC

Judy e-mailed all of us earlier this month to give us an idea of what she'd like us to discuss. For me, she said:

"Amy, as a self-employed media consultant who is involved  in online citizen journalism, I'd like you to address the role of bloggers and nontraditional reporters in widening (or bringing bias to) our understanding of environmental issues."

Ok, she only wants me to talk for 2-3 minutes about that, which is good. The format is brief introductory remarks from each panelist and then open it right up for discussion. That works for me, since I could go in so many different directions with the territory Judy laid out that if I had to speak any longer than that I'd probably reveal how incoherent my thinking still is today even with 3 cups of tea coursing through my veins.

Here are a few random thoughts that might prove to be interesting fodder for conversation...

I'll throw out a few questions that folks can chew on:

1. Who are we? Is journalism primarily a practice or a priesthood? (Personally I think it's more about committing acts of journalism than identifying with a profession or a news organization.)
2. Why are we here? Ultimately, what's the point of journalism? What are we trying to achieve -- our role in society, as a profession, as a business, and personally? Especially on the environment beat.
3. What can we do? Does journalism have to keep looking and feeling the way it's always looked and felt in order to continue to be useful and successful? How much can we play with the formats, tone, approach, culture, values, and diversity of contributors?
4. Who can we do it with? Where and how does it make sense for traditional professional journalists and news organizations to open up to collaboration and public conversations with community members, including bloggers and amateur journalists.

Seems to me that if we get back to those very very basic questions, we might view what we do in a less rigid light -- and other kinds of voices in the news landscape might start sounding a lot less threatening. I think xenophobia and journalism are a very bad mix.