marypcbuk

I just had a difference of opinion on Twitter where another journalist disagreed that leaving your review, your benchmarks, your test files and your personal EverNote account set up on a system you'd sent back at the end of the review counted as bad journalism. (I deleted the lot and unlinked the EverNote account). It's just admin, they said; lazy, stupid, unprofessional - but not bad journalism. I'll admit that fitting a pithy saying into 140 loses nuance but I do actually think that the whole process and business of being a journalist is journalism - not just the writing bits. Am I a bad journalist if I don't invoice for my work for six months? Yes, because I'm making it harder to do my job of journalism (either I run out of money or make the account department's job harder or both). Missing a meeting, sending in the wrong images, upsetting someone in PR, hogging a unit at a demo - I don't think I've done any of those any time recently but I'd count them as bad journalism too. Because, as Bobbie Johnson and Paul Ford put it in discussions I read right after my difference of opinion, journalism is a product and a business - and all the parts of your business matter.