Without a doubt, there are clear distinctions between writing blogs and practicing journalism. Blogs allow writers and readers to be participants in conversations, which creates a more dynamic relationship between blogs users compared to newspapers or magazines. Often times, blogs consist of an individual’s voice that can be bias and subjective while journalism involves chasing after larger truth and providing more objective point of view. Blogs is embedded into the open-source culture (free) while journalism concerns a lot with money and revenues. Despite their differences, blogs and journalism are rapidly developing into an intertwinement. The question I would like to propose is: do these blogs comprise of original journalism?
For example, CNN Anderson Cooper 360, a popular news media television show, has its own blog. Fox News also has its own blog talking about the current events. Many journalists produced their own blogs as well like Lucas Grindley and Howard Owen. New York Times also moved their newspapers articles online while allowing readers to share their opinions through comments (a feature that we often see in blogs). If journalists or news media use blogs for journalism purposes instead of personal use, wouldn’t that mean they admit blogs as a form of journalism?
This, however, does not mean all bloggers are journalists or that all journalists are bloggers. Not all blogs are considered as journalism. An example of this would be a site called Allkpop. Although the website prides itself for its breaking news report in the Korean entertainment industry, it would not be considered as original journalism since the bloggers receive their news from other news sources. Some of their bloggers do not live in Korea, so doing an investigative journalism would be almost impossible unless they receive information straight from primary source. At the same time, Allkpop cannot be viewed as purely regular blogs either because sometimes the bloggers would use investigative journalism techniques to get facts of a story. Therefore, Allkpop is considered as a combination of journalism and blogs.
An instance where blogs and journalism complement each other would be in the year of 2008. A blogger named Joshua Micah Marshall won George Polk Award for Legal Reporting. It is considered to be one of many accomplishments for bloggers because it was the first time the prestigious award was given to an online blogger. For Marshall’s case, his blog[link] about U.S. attorneys’ scandals that eventually caused Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign from his position. If journalism and blogs have not collided in the news reporting and stories sharing platform, then it would be hard to imagine how a blogger could win an award for a blog although the award was meant to be given to journalists practicing original journalism.
Blogging has become one of the most popular sensations around the internet world. There are blogs covering just about every topic one can possibly imagine. More and more, blogs are becoming places where people go to for information and current events. Some people are follow blogs more than they follow newspapers. Dan Gillmore, the author of We the Media, stated in his book that blog is an “extremely democratic form of journalism,” which the quote ultimately came from Jay Rosen from New York University. And I certainly agree with him.
I believe blogs can constitute original journalism. Exactly how blogs can do it would depend heavily upon the context and the tone created by the writer. Blogs bring about many different points of views from various authors, which strongly influenced my understanding of current events and news report. Blogs should not be viewed as a substitute for journalism but as a supplement that can take journalism into a different level of playing field instead.
Blogs consisting of opinions are no different from Op-Ed articles that appear in newspapers and magazines the world over. Of course, Op-Ed columns are edited to some degree; blogs are self-published, for the most part, which integrates both the good and the bad aspects of it.
~C
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I think there's a difference between blogs (and anything online) and print journalism. While doing some research recently, I used a book all about citing sources properly (yes, an incredibly boring book). However, the author made a really good point about the inherent difference between print and online sources. A print source has to be carefully verified by many people (reporters, interviewed experts, editors) before being deemed suitable for publication. On the other hand, any person with a computer can put information online and claim to have evidence for it. But since there's no professional organization behind online sources like blogs, you have no idea if the information in a blog is as accurate as that in print.
Also, online information can be changed at anytime. In print, this is impossible, so you know what you're reading is what was originally published, and what the author originally intended to say. Websites may have a "last updated" notice near the bottom of the page, but it is impossible to know if a website was significantly changed during the last update, or if the author just fixed a minor typo.
So I guess basically I think that, if we define journalism as verifiable and verified information, print journalism is far more trustworthy than online journalism or blogs.
Blogs do have that potential for what we might think of as real journalism. My school recently approved our club to have a school blog where we've mostly started posting reviews, but opinion and more are to be added. It's becoming a news source in itself, something more accessible that any student of our university can be a part of. Now, the school newspaper is a little ticked, but that's another story.
Good blog.