Artisan Journalism
July 13, 2005
TIPPINST -- While revising the readings and activities for the Media Writing module in our multimedia degree programme, I reviewed some musings by Elizabeth Rodriguez concerning blogging as "artisan journalism". References to the Oxford English Dictionary suggest it's actually a well-grounded concept.
Let's look at "artisan" as cited in literature. In 1590, Marlowe wrote is Faustus, "O what a world of profit and delight..Is promis'd to the studious artizan".
In Pliny (1601), Holland wrote, "But Parrhasius hath deceiued Zeuxis, a professed artisane.
By 1621, Ainsworth had annotated eleven "devillish Arts and Artizens, such as God's law condemneth".
In 1795, Mason proferred that "when a natural faculty is..advanced into an Art..its Artisans are ever ready to apply their exertions to it".
You need not make money as a journalist (blogger) to be credible, if you use the OED to stake your claim. The comprehensive definition for journalist is "one who journalizes or keeps a journal".
The editors of the OED define first defined "journalist" in Addison's 1712 "Spect. No. 323 2" with talk that could have been about a modern-day bloggers. Addison cites a "correspondent..is such a Journalist as I require... Her Journal..is only the picture of a Life filled with a fashionable kind of Gaiety and Laziness".
In 1775, a journalist would be one concerned about the facts. Mickle's "Dissertation of Lusiad" refers to "the force..is thus..described by Hernan Lopez de Castaneda, a contemporary writer, and careful journalist of facts".
In 1828, Webster defines "Journalist: the writer of a journal or diary" and within 170 years, people were keeping electronic journals online.
Evelyn Rodriguez -- "We're All Journalists in the Age of Ordinary Art"
Citations from the Oxford English Dictionary on the day that Google found 661 references to the term artisan journalism".
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