In the old days of mainstream media, ambition was easy to spot. Journalists with lots of it wanted columns, wanted to anchor, wanted glamorous beats and glittering prizes. Life is simpler in the new-media era: ambitious reporters want to get paid.
Sekoff wrote back, “We’ve always appreciated your contributions to the group blog. . . . In the days since OffTheBus, you obviously have transitioned into one of our top line bloggers. . . . The door is always open.”
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Fowler answered, “I realize that the Huffington Post does not pay bloggers, but I have reached a point where I need more for my work. I’m not only an opinionator; I have this last year gone out and done actual reportage. I’m no longer going to do that for free. I’ve paid my dues in the citizen journalism department; I’m a journalist now. So if you can’t find a place for me doing some kind of paid reporting, it’s goodbye. In the end, you know, it’s not so much about the money itself as the dignity it confers.”
My sympathy for Fowler jumped a few notches when I came across one of the last things she wrote for HuffPo. There’s opinionating, and then there’s a serious attempt to think something through, and “He Is Not One of Us,” posted September 9, made a more thoughtful run at fathoming what she calls the “Muslim meme,” or the “‘Obama is a Muslim’ delusion,” than I’d seen anywhere else. If she wasn’t paid for that and didn’t even think she deserved to be, the times are very strange.
If long after we’re gone anyone cares about the state of journalism in the early 21st century, historians might also be studying her career. “Going down to the Poynter Institute to teach a class on citizen journalism,” she e-mailed me. “I’m not quite sure why. CJ is the albatross around my neck.”
Upon being pointed to Joe the Cop’s post, Time Out Chicago editor and prolific tweep Frank Sennett stepped into the breach. He promptly condemned Joe’s opinionating as a “hate-filled, racist rant” and “hateful bile.” He professed to be astonished that the Tribune didn’t immediately banish the “racist blogger” who’d violated “basic standards of decency.” “By the end of the day,” ChicagoNow blogger Megan Cottrell would note, “Frank Sennett tweeted 100 times that Joe the Cop is a bigoted racist.”
