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Blogging for Dummies?
Guinnessy writes "Wired News reports that one of the most respected journalism schools in America is going to be teaching blogging as part of next semester's course. I find this quite interesting, especially considering the existing controversy over whether blogging, such as Slashdot, is real journalism or not. I still haven't made up my mind." "Blog" now takes the cake as the most ill-used word of 2002. Please draw distinctions between webpages with news, mindless link propagation, discussion sites, personal diaries or journals, etc.
Kuro5hin might rank as journalism. Not very good journalism in my opinion... Slashdot on the other hand is seldom anything more than a news cutting service with the occasional editorial comment. (more often than not the editiorial comment is more ignorant than the trolls...).
Freedom of the press is one of the most cherished freedoms we hold in this country (the US). It, hopefully, is the 4th branch of government that keeps all other branches in check through close scrutiny.
:-) are set up to print news as it comes with only the lightest of editing.
Lately, however, such scrutiny has become non-existent. Whether this is a result of the 9/11 attack and its subsequent Arab bashing or because powerful entities with ties to liberal political movements (Ted Turner) have bought out all the major news outlets is up in the air. If anything, it's probably a combination of both factors. These days we see nothing but carefully crafted 'news' and air-brushed reporters and anchors on the tube. The real news gets lost somewhere on the cutting room floor.
So where can we get our news now without the Big Brother Filter working overtime? The main source is the Web. Sites like the Drudge Report, NewsMax, and IndyMedia (not to mention our own new-anarchist Slashdot
So what comes out of this new media? Frankly, crap for the most part. However, hidden deep in the headlines are jewels of information and true news. Unfortunately these gems are surrounded by conspiracy theories and crackpot reporting that it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. That's the problem with the new media.
The benefit of the new media (or blogs as the article incorrectly calls it) is that discussion of the topics at hand can begin almost immediately. Slashdot.org is a great example because after each story the readers can chime in with their own comments and insights or provocations. In short, it is news by consensus. Not too shabby.
I have been pwned because my
Calling slashdot a blog, or calling it journalism.
There was a pretty good article about the "blogosphere" a week or two ago. Very long, and relatively interesting, especially if you are interested in blogs, journalism, news, and that sort of thing. If you have a blog, you might like it too. If you are interested, I've got interview questions sent off to John Hiler, the author of the blogosphere article. I think he'll be getting back to me in a few days. I'll have the interview posted on WebWord.com soon after that.
There was also another story making the rounds about a week ago about making a living from blogging. I was expecting a lot more from it, i.e., some real details on "how to do it", but it was still a reasonable article. It might give you some ideas. Mileage may vary.
Last link whore comments: If you haven't seen Blogdex or Daypop, you might want to check them out. Very nice tools to see what it hot in the world of weblogs.
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"most respected journalism schools "
I dont know about you... but I dont have much respect for journalists - nor berkeley...
I find that journalists have about as much integrity as lawyers and politicians. I guess thats why those groups run the world... little cunning bastards that do anything for a buck.
First of all, Michael is right..."blog" has become extremely overused, much like "P2P." But that's besides the point.
Merely linking to news does not equal journalism. Slashdot isn't journalism. Kuro5hin isn't journalism. Yahoo's Full Coverage site isn't journalism. Hell, Fark isn't journalism. They are link farms. They find and post links to actual news stories across the world. While this makes for an easy-to-read digest of news and information, it does not mean the site becomes a seeming bastion of original journalism.
Real journalism, IMHO (speaking as one), is going out, researching a story, interviewing people, and putting together a concise unbiased story (keep your media bias arguments until the end of class kids). Journalism is not posting a link to a news story elsewhere, and then adding your own personal opinions or thoughts. While the Berkeley school is trying to avoid this, putting a "blog" label on it won't make any difference. Major news sites, like the New York Times and the Washington Post already post their news to the Internet in real time. Some even include "Comment on this story" links as well.
Take away the personal opinions and rambling links, and you don't have a so-called "blog." You have an online news site, just like the big boys. Calling it a "blog" doesn't give any more "hipness" or credibility.
I wish everyone would get over this stupid "BLOGS ARE THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM" crap. You know what? They aren't.
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
It doesn't take an in-depth analysis of the news story to make journalism. It only needs to be true, correct, and competently addressed even if it's little more than a footnote.
Not everything in a newspaper is a front-page story, you know? News companies have limited space and resources to create and publish those marvellously researched pieces you're so fond of. There are also columns, socials, and those collections of AP/REUTERS notes that you find almost as a margin to the "big news" and compose 90% of what's happening in the world.
"Online news sites" are similar to these last. They condense information as much as possible while trying to give a non-misleading picture of what it is about (and usually fail), so that interested readers can do their own research and find out more.
Blogs with active comment systems are a mix of these with "open-eds" and "letters to the editor".
But Blogs may also be more than just a collection of links. While Slashdot follows this pattern, it's mostly because that's what it does best and/or what the community values (witness the popularity, on the other hand, of Jon Katz).
Kuro5hin, for example, follows more closely the pattern of a magazine or publication. MLPs are similar to the link collections (or AP notes), while the rest of the site is often populated by articles where the links are secondary to the argumentative content... which is in some cases not entirely about the current emotional state of the poster. Original content that is not a substitute for group therapy is possible in a blog, after all.
The advantage of blogs is that they provide an immediate source for the reader to do their research, so they don't necessarily have to accept the incomplete, inevitably misleading piece of news they were given. Users can interact with each other and with the author exchanging sources of research, and even correcting intentional and unintentional errors in the article.
The disadvantage is that, being posted by amateurs, they degenerate into diaries with links... that is, a throughly unentertaining and unresearched "opininion column" on electronic media.
Communities formed around these throughly biased weblogs (witness Slashdot), and will react against the removal of that bias because it gives them "a sense of community". They enjoy the non-journalistic flavor of the blog, but that does not mean a journalistic endeavor cannot benefit from the blog format. Rather, it means it must resist the temptation of pandering to the public which is probably greater than in other formats because of the greater level of feedback.
A journalistic "blog" should not foster that bias and would probably be unable to provide any "sense of community" while being competent in the journalistic sense, but one or many biased communities could be "resident" in a journalistic blog, though, much in the same way Clans or Guilds are specific to some online games.
I agree with you, though. Blogs are not the future of journalism, nor should they be. Hyperlinks are the future of journalism and should be the present; Blogs are just one of the ways of getting that into the heads of stubborn journalists half a century too late.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...