Where Joe Goes ...

Remember Joe Wurzelbacher?

The former plumbing contractor turned-political-pundit is is headed to Gaza to report on the conflict from his own perspective, and his new role as correspondent for pjtv.com is creating a stir among media "elites."

The reaction from the mainstream media has bordered on viciousness. This excerpt from CNN's Wolf Blitzer illustrates just how threatened media personalities are by people like Wurzelbacher and how quick they are to go on the offensive:

Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher, the man made famous by the McCain campaign, is headed to Israel to cover the conflict in Gaza. I’m not making this up…. Well, maybe he will be qualified to be a journalist. I’m certainly not qualified to become a plumber. I can tell you that.

As a former newspaper reporter and a professional journalist, I'm embarrassed by this kind of arrogance. Just last week, I replaced the guts in the back of my toilet tank. Does that make me a plumber? No. Does it mean I'm capable of plumbing? YES. Furthermore, if other people called me to replace the guts in their tanks, I'm quite sure I would be able to do it. The same works for news reporting.

Journalists like to pretend that they're the only ones who can do what they do. The reality is, they're not, as the plethora of ireporters has proven since the advent of the home video camera. Sometimes novices can even do it better. Keep in mind, it's not the footage of network news channels that was at the center of the John F. Kennedy assassination -- it was the Zapruder film. We watched it then, and we watch it now because it's the very best footage -- regardless of the source.

When it comes to news reporting, journalists have a few advantages over everyday people. They have the time to devote to it, they have a well of contacts developed from years of reporting and they are trained to report in the Associated Press "style."

Wurzelbacher obviously has the time, he won't need contacts in Gaza and the Associated Press style won't matter much when he's looking into the camera and showing the world what's happening in this dangerous area of the world. There's much more that goes into the craft, of course, but the best way to learn is by doing. There's the off chance that Wurzelbacher won't be able to determine what makes a good story, but that's doubtful. Joe's proven that he has a sense for what people want to see.

Rather than lampooning Wurzelbacher for attempting to enter the profession in these hard, economic times, the mainstream media should be embracing him. After all, no journalists have been admitted to Gaza, and Wurzelbacher stands a better chance of getting the story than all of them. Furthermore, Wurzelbacher is working for a web site, and -- as newspapers are learning -- the Internet is slowly dismantling the journalism industry and creating a new world of instant information being told by unknown personalities. In many cases (my recent blog post on HowObamaGotElected.com, for example), even I've beaten the mainstream media (including CNN) on stories -- and I wasn't even trying!!

If you're reading this, Joe, take my advice: finding news is simple if you just look for what's interesting to you. Chances are it will be interesting to others as well.

And while I'm at it, here are a few words of advice to my colleagues in the world of professional journalism: lose the arrogance. The ireporter you're ridiculing today is the "personality" taking your job tomorrow.

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