Personal site of journalist, baker, and storyteller Tony Ganzer.
Looking at media and journalism.
Part of a web series of bread baking and talk about the craft of journalism, this time with Rosemary Asiago. I talk about whether objectivity in journalism is a myth.
I hope you like it, and please subscribe on YouTube, and to my e-mail list.
It’s a silly mash-up, but one driven by serious impulses.
As a journalist by profession and vocation, I listen with dismay to how some demonize the monolithic ‘media’ with a carelessness that does a disservice to valid perspectives and gripes.
I’ve written before that journalists are servants of the people at our core, and listening, responding to, and engaging with the community is vital even if it sometimes takes great effort.
As an amateur bread baker, I like creating and providing food for others to enjoy. It can be a social act, both the baking process and the eating that follows. After college, I worked in a food co-op bakery to pay for gas in between reporting gigs — you could say the two things were entwined from the start.
Continue reading “Baking and breaking bread in the ‘War on Media’”
Part of a web series of bread baking and talk about the craft of journalism, this time with Rosemary. I hope you like it, and please subscribe on YouTube, and to my e-mail list.
Journalists, at their core, are supposed to be representatives for their fellow citizens. They’re afforded a Willy Wonka-style ‘golden ticket’ to enter board rooms, factory floors, and the streets of our communities to show and help explain what the heck is going on.
The public expects journalists to use that access and special status to get the public information they need to understand our world better, and know where they might want to advocate, or protest, or investigate more.
This may seem obvious to say, so why say it? The on-going ‘War on Media’ is adding to the already crippling deficit of trust between journalists and some segments of society, and it doesn’t need to be that way.
Continue reading “A K-pop ‘ARMY’ might show us a way forward in the ‘War on Media’ (no, really)”
Immigrants come in many forms, but the goal is often the same: more opportunity, more security, more stability.
Who these people are, and under what conditions they come, stay, or leave the United States–or wherever they are destined–are issues of immense consequence.
Despite the gravity of the issue, or maybe because of it, good journalism about immigration, immigrants, systems of exclusion, etc, is often drowned out in favor of bad journalism. Continue reading “Unsettled: A measured view of immigration from Ohio”
Twitter is inherently a social networking site for making short but unquestionably public statements about everything and anything. As you likely see in my Twitter feed to the left of this post, my Tweets are mostly about journalism, media, or international relations–my dominant fields of interest and study. My comments are ones that I would defend in person, because they are made in the public sphere. There is no expectation of privacy in Tweeting, unless done through the moderately helpful “Direct Message” system. Twitter might be compared to a bullhorn letting its users send brief thoughts into a noisy and confusing web space.
There is an increasing trend in journalism to aggregate Tweets by topic or user into “news stories.” Chief among the tools for this Twitter journalism is Storify, which organizes selected Tweets to form a narrative. This example from Canadian CTV news shows how it works…you list the Tweets to tell a story, and the journalist doesn’t necessarily need to talk to anyone directly. The Tweets are taking the place of interviews, in some cases. This is annoying, and a result of a race for posting “news” quicker in the digital age. Why talk to someone when you can just post their Tweets? Continue reading “Perils in aggregation journalism: public or ‘public’”
I am proud to report my current employer, World Radio Switzerland, was awarded five regional Edward R. Murrow awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association in the U.S.! The awards are some of the most prized in broadcast journalism.
World Radio Switzerland won in the international category, Region 14, for a small market station. “Small market” is defined (under one description I found) as one serving an audience of fewer than 1.4 million people. WRS’s main market is Geneva, served by FM, and has about 190,000 residents. It has listeners elsewhere in the country through web streaming, and digital radio (which is supposed to replace FM at some point.)
Most of the awards were for my feature work, including a series from Cairo and special reporting on Swiss banks and transparency. I am proud and honored to have brought these awards to the station, and am excited by even being considered for national Murrow awards (to be decided out of the pool of regional winners.)