Is blogging the new form of journalism? Should bloggers be held to the same standards as journalists?
While browsing YouTube, I came across this interesting video dealing with these exact questions. The man behind the webcast is Chris Pirillo, a 35-year-old man who has been participating in web conversations since 1992, when he started lockergnome.com as a "content publishing network." He now publishes personal blogs and lifecasts (webcasts dealing with various life topics and interesting how-to tidbits) to tens of thousands of viewers and is also a top subscribed partner on YouTube; in the past year he posted over 1,000 webcasts. He also does weekly live video segments for CNN.com where he gives "tech" advice to his savvy audience. Fun fact: When you search "Chris" on Google his site is listed first in the results.
So, after seeing his impressive resume, I was definitely interested in how Chris would answer these questions. To my surprise, he answered them quite closely to how I would answer them myself.
Chris and I agree that blogging is not the "new" form of journalism, and that bloggers mostly write out of passion or extreme interest on a topic. Also, bloggers and journalists are not one in the same because they are not held to the same standards. Although bloggers and journalists both write articles, posts, etc. of high content, journalists' work comes from a place of research and a blogger's work comes greatly from a place of personal thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Therefore, blogs are full of opinions, whereas journalism is meant to be unbiased. If a journalist misquotes or provides wrong information in a story, he or she is held responsible for that, a blogger does not hold that same responsibility because much of their work contains the research of actual journalists, so if the info is wrong, the journalist is to blame, not the blogger.
I suppose that the answers to these questions mainly depend on each individual's definition of journalists, bloggers, journalism and blogging. Based on my personal measures of these words, blogging is not the new form of journalism, it's more just a style of writing; and bloggers definitely shouldn't be held to the same standards as journalists because blogging is not journalism.
To check out Chris Pirillo's website full of blogs and webcasts on various topics, click here.
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I think we say that journalists are held to a higher standard a lot more than that's actually true. While journalism is a profession, it's not professional. There are no exams, no industry standards, and no licenses. We've always held it as sacred the ability for every American to be a journalist if they want. Be careful what you wish for. Now for the first time, every American can be a "journalist" and the newspaper industry is eating their hat. Although more information is always best, there is something to be said about keeping that flow of information clean, as I learned in J411. Journalism used to concern the "educated" because it was information disseminated to the public by the public, now we have the same thing, just on a larger scale.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting point about journalism not having any industry standards in the form of exams or licenses, and it's true anyone can be a journalist nowadays with the changing times. But the fact that the industry standards are not so tangible (i.e. I passed the test and now have my medical license after eight years of school) is what makes journalism great in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, a difference still exists between journalists and bloggers. The simple fact is, bloggers aren't out there breaking stories. Bloggers don't tell me anything I didn't know before, they typically just present something in a new light. And that's the difference in my view.
Caution: When journalists act as bloggers on news Web sites and such, I still view that as legitimate journalism because they have still done reporting recently as a basis for their online blog.
I think bloggers deserve a little more credit than you all are giving them. Bloggers can break big stories. The story about Obama saying small-town Americans "cling to their guns and religion" came from a blogger. Also, bloggers can have insight into stories that traditional journalist lack. For example, who do you think would know more about an event in a small community, a blogger who has lived their his/her whole life or a report that is just passing through?
ReplyDeleteI think niche-blogging can be really helpful to the public. If someone is passionate about a topic, they are more likely to delve deeper into it and perhaps work harder to find problems.
ReplyDeleteNow, there are bloggers who simply comment on news and stories or just offer it as way to let readers in on a little bit of the personality. This is fine too, but obviously not nearly as helpful.