Journalist ADD, Blogger OCD and Our Collective DNA
If journalism were a psychological disorder, traditional print reporters have attention deficit disorder, while bloggers are more on the obsessive-compulsive-disorder side of the coin.
This is according to Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, who presented her testimony Wednesday to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in a hearing about the future of journalism, along with Google’s Marissa Mayer, former Washington Post editor Steve Coll and others.
Ms. Huffington called the profusion of online journalism “a Golden Age for news consumers,” not unexpected given her Web-media leanings. She said mainstream-media reporters must change their approach. “For too long, traditional media have been afflicted with attention deficit disorder–they are far too quick to drop a story–even a good one, in their eagerness to move on to the Next Big Thing.”
