Slashdot Mirror
Are Blogs the Future of Journalism?
jnf82 writes "Recently bloggers were part of the forces compelling Trent Lott to resign as Senate majority leader and Dan Rather to apologize to viewers on national television -- leaving many to ponder
if blogs could someday supplant traditional journalism. More likely they'll become a 'fifth estate' keeping watch over mainstream media and politics, says Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell in Foreign Policy Magazine's current issue. So will the new media revolution be blogged? 'No,' says Anna Marie Cox, author
of Wonkette, 'A revolution requires that
people leave their house.'"
http://www.industelegraph.com
'tis but a scratch.
I think what you meant to say was:
The problem is that news companies are filled with misinformation. People need blogs to filter out the crap.
Perhaps news companies will some day be fact checked, and reliable.
There, that's better.
El riesgo vive siempre!
With a single-party controlling the Executive & Legislative, and arguably in charge of the Judiciary, combined with a virtual Plutocracy in the ownership of the major media outlets, the U.S. needs to have SOMETHING to counter the propoganda. So far, Blogs have done the best job of filling in this need.
I count Slashdot in this group, especially with the coverage of the electronic voting fiasco starting here long before the election. The mainstream media have had very little coverage of the voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida, but the memes are alive due to dKos and Wonkette, among others.
And where would be without the power of Fark???? (only slightly kidding)
Oh, and Wonkette is full of it on this subject. Revolutions can happen in any form, not just "people in the street" - in fact, in the U.S. today marching for your cause is the most sure way to get ignored - "who cares about what all those hippies think?" is the common reaction, negating any gains made by the exposure.
Revolution happens most commonly through Evolution, and the Blogosphere is evolving on a daily basis. Don't write their obituary before they've reached the peak!
They aren't about reporting the news
Actually, most of the reporting coming out of Ukraine is coming in blog form. While the AP has a three-man bureau in Kyiv and the New York Times has a couple of stringers in the country, the vast majority of the actual first-person reporting is coming out via the dozens of blogs maintained either by Ukrainians or by Westerners who are living there.
Interestingly, the same is true of both Iraq and Iran, although there's recently been a huge crackdown in Iran.
I write in my journal
People need other people they trust to filter out the crap. Many would argue that trusting someone *OTHER* than a news company to filter out crap for you would result in better news.
Blogs are new, and there are a lot of them, and quality for the majority is low. But probably, a few years down the road, some blogs will develop a reputation for being good at filtering out the crap, and those "blogs" will become the new "news organizations".
The current news organizations started as many, many, smaller news outlets that, over the years, have consolidated into a few conglomerates, who have a pretty good stranglehold on the existing means of distribution, and thus present a pretty high barrier to entry for new news outlets.
That's what the internet changes - it obliterates that barrier to entry. Yes, the vast majority of people who try to take advantage of that will produce crap, but hopefully a few will produce something better than what is currently produced by the conglomerates - or at least, something better for some audiences.
When cost of distribution goes down, variety of product distributed, and thus likelihood that a particular audience can find a product more closely suited to their needs, goes up. Cable TV is a good example of this - creating a cable channel is much cheaper than creating a broadcast channel, which is why there is such a variety of cable channels. The internet just lowers that cost of distribution even further.
paintball
I think the future of journalism is Wikinews More info
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
Yeah, and it used to be the case that to make a purchase you had to leave your house. Yawn. I'm bored of people who say that it's only revolution if people bleed, it's only activism if you spend a night in jail, it's only significant if it's significant in the particular way prescribed by the self-appointed arbiter of meaningfulness. What if there's a revolution in revolutions? What if suddenly people are free to assign their OWN notions of worth to their actions and the consequences thereof? "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, "... Cox's attempt to pose as an authority sounds like the laughter/derision of stage two, just before "then they fight you".
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
The mainstream media doesn't do reporting anymore. The blogosphere allows for a lot of crap, but through that crap comes a lot of valuable research. How many Iraqis are allowed to give their opinions on the nightly newscasts? Yet I can chose any number of Iraqi blogs and get a point of view that I would never see on the evening newscast - and because of it I've learned things about Iraqi culture and the situation there that the media would never have time to delve into.
exactly! News companies are just generators, and they will report on what is happening whether or not it is relevant to the end consumer. I don't care what the weather is like in Florida, unless there happens to be a hurricane. Putting a filter between the news source and my screen will make sure that only things of interest to me are competing for screen time. It's up to the consumers to decide which filters(blogs/sites like /.) are worth listening to.
Further, if 2000 people are writing about a particular event, you've got much better odds of getting the real story than listening to just a few news networks. Filter out the crap and you'll still be left with a wider range of useful information sources.
They can make us focus on only part of a story. Dan Rather is resigning in part due to the controversy surrounding the bogus documents he used in a story sbout Bush's military record. Although most people agree that the documents were forged, hardly anyone says that the underlying story (that Bush did not meet his National Guard responsibilities) was false.
In short, Rather got the story right, but all anyone talks about is the forged documents.
My other sig is extremely clever...
How ironic. That entire post is unaccountable editorializing. The fact is, blogs provide an excellent filter for information. Most of it is tripe, but there are informed writer's such as Juan Cole's commentary on Iraq. The great thing (or bane, depending on your perspective) is that there are enough voices to get a reasonable sampling of public opinion. I don't think blogs will replace traditional journalism because someone still needs to report the information. However, you will see mainstream journalism looking to the Internet more frequently because specialty writers can still scoop them (see Bev Harris at Blackboxvoting). I could go on, but I'm late for class.
harmonious design
Blogging is a fad and journalists are lazy. Most blogs are nothing more than someone scribbling on the urinal wall of the Internet. The more trustworthy ones are nothing more than people who add a couple of one liners to a news story gathered elsewhere. The blogosphere is filled with kranks and petty megalomaniacs who are only given life by the laziest of professions: journalists.
Why do I call them lazy? Well, I was a journalist and worked the sports desk of a major college town newspaper (Top 10 NCAA spors program every year and the one of best women's BBall school of all time -- you figure it out). I thought the culture of laying around doing nothing until deadline was nigh was peculiar to that newspaper (on all desks) until I got a job at a TV station as a factchecker/script writer on the metro beat. Basically, I would write the little blurbs the talking heads would say. Harder than it seems! Well, the reporters there were equally lazy and often just made shit up on the spot. I was fired for having trouble with "truth."
My point is that if the fad of blogging disappeared, then journalists (read lazy scum) would cut to some other way of increasing their dicking off time. Example: before blogs there was 'trolling the wire.' Basically, you would read wire reports coming out of other metro areas, then take a story that was fairly interesting, add a local angle, change it enough that it was yours and BOOM 8 inches of copy.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Most likely blogs will be the future of generating grass roots media spin. They'd be a great way of getting a nice grass roots campaigns going, so I imagine that PR and propagandists will adopt them more so. Journalism is mainly a branch of marketing and PR nowadays of course. A lovely place for anonymous disinformation, propaganda and smear campaigns etc. It'll probably save governments the trouble of having to put their names to propaganda, so perhaps they'll enjoy the anonymity.
For the most part however, they'll likely remain the narcisist and egomaniac paradise. Oh, and the last bastion for the various tin hat brigades - born again Christians, UFOlogists, etc.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Huh? Which blogs are you reading? Most posts are news analysis, which is always sourced, go check the background yourself. The value of a blogger is no different than the value of a reporter. One just does it for the love. A blogger is just equivalent to some one who writes open source software in their spare time. Many of the well-known bloggers have their own networks of people they use for info. They tend to have at least pro-am expertise if not actual professional expertise in their area. You might be right about the avg joe blog, but to lump all of them into the same category like this is like claiming equivalency between the Linux kernel and any random project on SourceForge. Someone already cited Juan Cole, he actually shows up on the various cable news shows - as an expert, getting to read his opinion on day to day issues, in his area of expertise (Middle East affairs) is much more in depth than even the reporting you get from say - the BBC.
Is their personal bias and opinion interjected? Of course, that's one of the freedoms that bloggers like about the format. If you still can't recognize the difference between someone's opinionated utterance and their reasoned analysis, you're probably in over your head with the local newspaper's editorial page. I honestly think what people like to describe as bias in the media is a lack of ability to discern what is verifiable and what is speculation. Oh, and if speculation is being bundled as verified information, you're being lied to - see Limbaugh (the original blogger) for examples.
Actually, the one thing about US mainstream media is that they only go on verified sources. This means that they take the word of governments as more credible than non-governmental organizations, even when the government is lying - see the build up to the Iraq war or torture by US forces for examples. The only dangers that the US media likes to report about are the ones posed by the weak and defenseless, no matter how remote that danger is compared to the 800 pound gorilla that doesn't get covered. Why do you think Americans are more worried about the "urban dressed" kid down the road than the corporate predators already squeezing them?
Bloggers - ahem, credible bloggers - have the ability to restore some balance to the system. I certainly appreciate the good ones.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
"While out on the campaign trail covering candidates, my own network's political unit would not even give me exit poll information on election days because it was thought to be too tricky for a common reporter to comprehend. If you are standing in the main election night studio when your network's polling experts start discussing the significance of a particular state poll, you the reporter will hear about three words out of one hundred that you will understand. These polls occur in the realm of statistics and probability. They require PhD-style expertise to understand. The people who analyze them for news organizations, like the legendary Warren Mitofsky and Martin Plissner at CBS News -- have trade associations like doctors do to certify their work.
"When you the humble reporter are writing a story based on the polls you need one of these gurus standing over your shoulder interpreting what they mean or you almost certainly will screw it up. There is a word for this kind of teamwork and expertise. It's called 'journalism'."
The writer concludes:
"...the chances of the bloggers replacing mainstream journalism are about as good as the parasite replacing the dog it fastens on."
Of course, this is a retired journalist writing this. While I have nothing but respect for career journalists, it makes sense that they would be the first to lash out against bloggers. Plus, let's face it, older generations often look down on new forms of media... just look at resistance to hiphop music and the SMS-style of writing for further examples.
I don't think that was what she meant. Perhaps sweat would be a more appropriate necessity - instead of staying in front of the computer screen and scanning the internet for information before rehashing it and adding your own opinion, you have to work to find facts that aren't necessarily already posted on the web. Go places, make phone calls, interview people, videotape events, etc. With so few news sources available to bloggers, other than the mainstream media that is generally dismissed as being unreliable, biased and selective by those same bloggers, how can a reporting revolution come about?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh