But (and there’s always a but) I still think you’re wrong about bloggers rejoicing in lower standards (and I think that comment, more than any , got people’s backs up).

Adam made the point over on the comments on his blog that it’s different standards rather than lower ones. You’ll rarely find a blogger that rejoices in the fact that they’re worse than journalists. Many of them strive to be – and often achieve – better standards, and the comments are an excellent way to correct.

I also think that you’re still trying to apply a traditional way of working to a medium that’s different. Oneline, like print and broadcast, is a different medium.

And, in this case, you have two PERSONAL blogs that aren’t dealing with stories. They’re posting opinions and observations. I think this is a key difference. Martin’s post was an opinion and, one of the joys of this is if somebody posts something on a blog that is wrong, it can be easily corrected and that comes down to how to engage on blogs – and, again, I think this was what upset people. I think this whole, erm, whatever it is (brouhaha, incident, issue, whatever) would have probably been avoided with a friendly “Hi Martin, thanks for your comments. By the way, just to point out that actually we do have training in this area, here’s a few links, let me know if you’ve got any more questions on this, etc etc. I didn’t read it as Martin being out to deliberately write a negative story on the NUJ (because it wasn’t a story in the first place) just expressing frustration. That’s the joy of blogs, you can interact, correct and the rest in real time. I quite like this way of working.

Also, yes, raising standards, I’m all for it. But realistically, how do you apply this to a personal blog. Take this one for example. I have, in the past, briefly ranted about British Gas’ customer service on here (this isn’t something I do often or would necessarily encourage – mroe the last desperate act of a man who has been passed from pillar to post in a customer service hell). Now, picture the scene. As an occasional journalist, upholding these standards, I ring the BG press office:

“Hi, I’m calling about something I’m writing. It’s about a customer who’s had a poor experience with customer service.”

“Ok, who are you writing it for?”

“My personal blog. It gets about a thousand hits a month. But I am a journalist.”

I’m not quite sure what the press officer’s response would be, but I think I can guess.

Now, if I was writing for a consumer website (I’ve never written for one of these), I can imagine I’d get a slightly different response.

“Hi, I’m doing a story about your level of customer service. I’m writing for Consumer Website X. Our address is — and we get x hits a month…”

You see what I’m getting at here?

And, yes, this comes back to some of the work I do for Online PR. It can be frustrating when somebody gets something wrong about your organisation, but often a friendly email or comment rectifies this quite quickly. A defnesive comment often makes the situation worse. Openness, transparency and accuracy are the watchwords both for journalism and PR. We’re getting there slowly, I think

Quick bit on legitimacy – these stories that break online can occasionally have this impression. But that’s largely due to the media who give credence to it. And if it’s not being covered, people often ask why not (there may be good reasons for this, but it’s kind of a vicious circle that we’ve got into and I’m not sure how we break out of it).

Anyway, in conclusion: Journalists are sometimes wrong. Bloggers are sometimes wrong. Both can be corrected, some are easier to correct than others. And unless it’s really bad, it’s probably not worth losing any sleep over.

yes I was over – defensive but the original post said we did nothing and we do. People did not know the GS has a blog and yet it is linked to on the home page of the NUJ website and so on.

I do understand that bloggers post opinions and then have the arguments online.

I also know that lost of things have been found out and first reported on blogs and then followed up by mainstream media. – the Caveat tot hat is that a lot of thing that would have been ignored or avoided by the mainstream media (an therefore for never published) appear to have more legitimacy if they appear on a blog and get picked up. This is also true of youtube video.

My point is that journalism – so I am really referring to journalists’ blogs – ought to follow the rules and ethics of journalism, not have a lower set of standards.

If you read the comments people made to my posts, many do rejoice in the fact that bloggers do not need to check their facts before publication, for example. That, to me , is rejoicing in lower standards.

So, I agree with the comments made. We have low standards in some areas of the printed media and in broadcast too. I criticise them equally. I am all about raising standards.

The NUJ’s Professional raining Committee has decided to launch it s own blog. When it (that probably mean I) do(es) in a week or so, please come along and comment.

A couple of quick things on your comments, as much to clarify what I wrote than anything else.

The next generational thing: This wasn’t so much there’s a complete difference between those working today and those tomorrow. I think what I was trying to get across was the majority of us working in journalism or the media today have had to adapt to online – most of the developments have come after we were born. Even for those of us in our late twenties, like myself, it’s not something that has come naturally. We’ve had to pick up these skills, learn new mindsets and new ways of working.

The next generation have practically been born with the internet in their hand (well, not literally). The internet will have always been there rather than something that at one point was new, exciting and unfamiliar. Chances are they’ll be much more web savvy than your average journalist working today (not including the like of you, I, Nosemonkey or Adam in this, but you get what I mean hopefully).

At the same point, unions aren’t quite as prominent or as influential as they once were. I’d argue (and this is from an entirely personal point of view) that it’s not longer a matter of course for new journalists to sign up with the NUJ – they need to be sold on it, convinced what the benefits are for them.

Maybe the current recession will do just that, given that the job market is less stable. But if the union wants to build and recruit the next generation of journalists, it has to appeal to them, including embracing the online world they’ve grown up with, and Chris’ comments probably won’t do any favours in that area.

Hope that makes sense.

As for describing the NUJ as a brand – that was done deliberately. I’d argue that any organisation, product or no product, that requires donations or money or is selling something (in this case the benefits and security of being in a union) can be described as a brand.

You are selling something, you are soliciting money from people (even if it is for a good cause. I think the union is generally a good thing, even if I’m not a member). That, to me, is a brand. The NUJ is a brand, MacMillan Cancer are a brand, Liberty are a brand, the Labour party are a brand and Nike is a brand. Brands can be damaged or harmed if they send out the wrong signals, so, to my mind, Chris has damaged the NUJ’s online brand with his comments.

A couple of quick (although knowing me, it probably won’t be quick ) points I disagree with the above

I genuinely don’t think that the majority of comments or Adam or Martin’s original posts were particularly hostile – frustrated, yes, but not hostile. Certainly in Adam’s first post, there looked like some kind of progress in the comments. Had it been left there, that would be that. I don’t even think they were intended as an attack on the department (at least not how I read it).

But (and while not wanting to speak for Adam here), try to put yourself in his shoes. You’ve had a minor disagreement, but seem to have come to some kind of conclusion. Then you notice the ‘effing blogs’ thing. Would not that get your back up slightly? I wouldn’t be best pleased if I’d got traffic to this post with that as the subject line.

And Chris’ comments – while he may have been genuinely hurt by some of what was said on there – didn’t help the situation. There’s plenty of dismissive, angry, condescending and scattergun comments to all and sundry there, and that hasn’t helped. You’ve got Charlie Beckett and Suw Charman-Anderson in the comments, both of whom definitely know what they’re doing and with years of experience (much more so than me, that’s for sure).

One of the areas I’m currently working on is reputation management online and the way Chris has handled this is a classic example in how not to play it. I’d genuinely love to know what he found inaccurate in Adam’s posts (and Adam doesn’t write the comments either – compared to the type of comments on, say, a typical Guardian piece, it’s been pretty intelligent and civil).

To me, it’s something that’s been blown out of all necessary proportion largely (and sadly) by Chris’ comments.

He may well be a leading light in online training and journalism and very clued up in that area. He just doesn’t come across like that in what he’s written – and he takes it hard for people to differentiate between Chris the NUJ Training Chair and Chris the journalist and NUJ member. If he’d made that clear from the start, I think that would have helped things.

But, and I hope that hasn’t come across as too negative, it’s really good to read what you say about online journalism and it’s good to know there are people heavily involved in the organisation who working in and pushing for more online training and representation. And, yes, it’s a huge organisation – you’re always going to get people from the extremes of the spectrum (eg online is great, online is crap).

I’d also like to echo what the other two comments above say as I agree entirely with them.

“The NEXT generation of journalists will have grown up not only without unions but immersed in that online environment.

“They will blog, Twitter, podcast [5], vodcast and whatever else comes along between now and then. They will work for web-only publications, some of whom probably haven’t even been conceived at this point in time.”

Hmm, firstly, why is this the “NEXT generation” when journalists like myself have been working online only for more than a decade. I’ve worked almost exclusively as an online journalist (apart from a couple of little bits of freelance work for print publications now and then) since 1998 – with RTÉ and Amnesty International mainly (but also Edexcell and, believe it or not, the Council for World Mission – the dot bomb led to some desperate measures).

You give the impression that the union isn’t in the online space, which is completely wrong. New media is the fastest growing sector of the NUJ – we’ve got strong membership not only in the usual suspects (BBC, Guardian), but also in AOL and hundreds of members dotted around the industry. We have designers, coders, bloggers and journalists of all descriptions as members and the list is growing all the time.

The next generation isn’t suddenly going to appear afresh without any connections to those who’ve gone before and, if things keep going the way they’ve been going, the NUJ will be as well established in online media and beyond as it has been in print, TV and radio.

“Above all, don’t get drawn into a slanging match. Your brand will be better off for it. If you feel the blog is that influential and the matter is that important, then you can always drop the author a polite but firm email and ask for corrections.”

You do realise the NUJ is a trade union, not a product? Sorry to seem facetious, but unions are usually expected to stand up and fight for principles. Unions are, when they work properly, democratic organisations full of robust debate. If we didn’t stand up for ourselves and our members, no-one would notice we were around.

What particularly riled Chris was the attack on the people employed by the union to work in the training department. Attacks on the union’s employees are not fair and not legitimate – they’re people who do a very difficult job very well and ill-informed attacks on them will elicit a strong response from those of us who know what they do. If you want to attack someone, go for those of us elected to the National Executive Committee who are directly responsible to members.

Finally, it’s important to remember that, when people like Chris or I comment on blogs, we’re doing so as individuals – we’re not the union. The union is its thousands of members, with all the contradictions, personalities and egos that goes with them. That’s what you get with a democratic trade union.

The thing is, though, the NUJ isn’t a union just for journalists who write meticulously-researched, original pieces. It contains among its members any number of hacks who spend most of their days re-writing agency copy, or spewing out mindless churnalism, celebrity gossip and banal lifestyle pieces that could be written by anyone with a spare five minutes to look up the subject-matter on Google. Most professional journalists these days don’t live up to the (near-mythical) journalistic standards of yesteryear any more than most bloggers do.

Of course, if this NUJ chap is arguing for a return to such high journalistic standards across ALL media types then I’m all for it. If newspapers could scrap all the mindless dross and concentrate on “proper” journalism again then I’d be delighted. Or at least, I would be for the week or so they managed to keep it up before going bankrupt – because there’s no money in “proper” journalism. We live in a world where Jade Goody’s wedding plans are of more interest to more people than the possibility that the Home Secretary – the Home sodding Secretary, for Christ’s sake – abused public funds for personal gain. Little wonder, then, that journalistic standards are slipping across the board. To single out blogs – the vast majority of which make no pretence to be “journalistic” and have no hope of competing with the professional media – suggests a rather blinkered take on the industry.

(As a vague aside, I’ve never bothered joining the NUJ myself. First qualified for student membership about 12-13 years ago now, but was too lazy. When I got my first job on a magazine the company didn’t recognise the union, so there was little point. Soon after I went full-time freelance a couple of years back I was just getting around to joining when they organised an anti-Israel boycott – and as that went entirely against my personal ideal of journalistic impartiality it’s put me off the idea for good. This latest silly outburst from someone from the union hasn’t exactly improved my opinion of the organisation either…)