spj

New media is replacing old media at a pace that threatens traditional journalistic values that America relies on, Tom Brokaw told a gathering of Minnesota journalists Thursday night. “We’re constantly behind the curve,” he said of the news industry’s sluggishness to adjust. “It needs to happen quickly.” Blogging in the current “Thomas Paine environment” is not journalism, he said. “Most of the ‘journalism’ on the Internet is aggregation.”

Someone at the Capitol is trying to “stifle public access” to proceedings there, says the Minnesota chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in a new statement this afternoon. Exactly who, an SPJ board member tells the Minnesota Independent, isn’t known. At issue are rules — old, new and not-yet-made — on which media can get floor access in the House of Representatives and who can record what in committee rooms.

Should journalists who do their reporting online have the same access at the State Capitol that broadcast and print media enjoy? It’s an intriguing issue for people interested in media and government. “It is a beaut,” says Minneapolis media attorney Mark Anfinson.

Today’s media round-up: The Secret Service warned mainstream media sources about alleged threats against them by RNC protesters (this independent media site didn’t get such tips). A look at how Twitter served as the “police scanner of the 21st century newsroom.” And more.

The Minnesota chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the country’s largest organization of reporters and editors, has just released a statement in response to recent confrontations between local police and media-makers in the weeks prior to the Republican National Convention. Calling actions against a KSTP photographer and a trio of New York new-media artists “definite warning signs,” the SPJ states that efforts “to intimidate journalists never work. Such misplaced heavy-handedness only escalates tensions–something we don’t need as thousands of respected delegates fill the convention hall next week and thousand more citizens take to the streets to express themselves.”