Journalism in comics is an oxymoron. Some will claim that it exist. It does but it is very rare and not of the best quality. With blogs, journalism about comic books has taken a more commentary perspective instead of reliance on press release news. Press release news has been a staple of online journalism inside and outside of comic books.
The industry has reacted favourably to press release news with ample supply sent to comic book press outlets like The Comic Book Bin everyday. Press releases are not bad at all. They serve a purpose. They announce new products, changes in companies, and big events. But we comic book reporters can get lazy. We have been lazy and often flaunted on our Websites and blogs verbatim whatever was sent to us by a source as a press release without checking the information independently of the publicist that sent it originally.
For years, most of the work we did here at The Comic Book Bin was centered around press release news. Readers never complained and the supply was plentiful. But there is always the nagging feeling that more can be done. More should be done. More has often meant commenting on news, like in a blog. That’s the extent of most “in depth” comic book journalism.
Before the Internet, comic book journalism was based on actual research and digging information. A secondary function was analysis, which is what most blogs claim to provide these days. What’s happening in comic book journalism is happening across many other industries related to entertainment of consumer goods like tech toys. Reporters are sent a press release and often they will try to reword what was sent.
Real journalism, about comic books or otherwise is based on founding principles of objectivity – or an attempt at objectivity and offering concise and precise information to readers. You’ve probably heard about it. We call them the five questions. Who, what, where, when, why, and sometimes, if we’re feeling adventurous, how. This is what every piece of news is supposed to do to inform a reader. To be fair, most press release news does that quite well, but the news is not separated from the source. It should be. There’s a reason why the media is called the fourth estate. The estates are based on the power holder in a society, according to British political theory. The first estate is the clergy – quite less powerful in North America, but very present and influential in places like the Muslim world. The second estate is based on the nobility, or in current times, the government, both elected and the civil service. The third estate is the people that are governed, the electors.
What does all of this has to do with comic book news? Not much. Unless we see analogues of the estates in the comic book industry. This is something that we have defended at The Comic Book Bin for years. Readers matter as much as creators and publishers, if not more. So who are the estates of the comic book industry. Well, the easiest is the fourth estate – it’s places like The Bin, although we willingly comply more than often with the first two estates in order to attract the attention of the third estate, you the reader and person buying comics. The first estate is obviously the creators, the people that make comic books. The second estate is composed of publishers, but everyone else that enables comic books to be distributed to the third estate. That can include publishers, makers of action figures, Web Comics’ portals, distribution houses. Just like outside of comics, where the first estate has the blessing of the gods, but not the ultimate handle over power, we see the same phenomenon in comics. The comic creator may be the most blessed and cherished estate. The one most admire and want to emulate. But it is not the estate with the real power. That belongs, traditionally to the second estate. I prefer to say that this power belongs to the third estate, the comic book buyer. As for the fourth estate, it is the one that gets the least respect, is taken the most for granted. But journalists have always had to justify their existence, whether when writing about comic books or not. We at The Bin will be Zen about this. Thank you for reading this.