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Only 5% Of Bloggers Are Journalists
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "A recent study has concluded that only 5% of bloggers have news as their primary topic. The study was conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and found that 37 percent of the surveyed blogs were reporting on their personal life, 11 percent on political matters, 7 percent on entertainment, and 6 percent on sports. There's also plenty of extra data in the report itself. From the article: 'About 34 percent see their blogging as a form of journalism; 65 percent disagreed. Just over a third of the bloggers said they often conduct journalistically appropriate tasks such as verifying facts and linking to source material.'"
"Just over a third of the bloggers said they often conduct journalistically appropriate tasks such as verifying facts and linking to source material.'"
Welcome to slashdot.
Just cheaper.
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
This just in:
A wide-ranging study of the literate population of the world concluded that a mere 5 percent of them use news as their primary topic--a figure at odds with perceptions that literacy is remaking journalism.
Clearly literacy has no effect on journalism.
So what percentage of journalists are bloggers?
Only? Since when was it expected that any bloggers were journalists? The only blog I know of that even comes close to journalism is Slashdot, and we all know how that turned out...
Personally, I've always just seen it as a way to share my random shit with the rest of the world. And judging by all the other blogs I've ever read, I'm not alone in that.
These figures are absolutely not a surprise.
5% are reporting on the media. The ones discussing sports, entertainment, politics, etc. are on a journalistic bent, whether or not they cover the media.
This is like saying that the only journalists at NPR do the "On the Media" show.
Once again, lies, damn lies, and statistics.
I think I need a new sig here.
Very misleading headline... The article is about how 5% of blogs are about news in the real world, as opposed to emo LiveJournal/Xanga stuff. Calling anyone with a website who writes about something they saw on TV a journalist is kind of strange.
blogging about blogosphere, repeating what other bloggers are blogging. It's a self-sustained feedback loop. I'm pretty sure it's also major energy source in the future.
Is this the most useless poll ever? Or, by asking this question, have I just beaten it?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Slashdot summary - "About 34 percent see their blogging as a form of journalism"
Er, get it right.
The article said "only 5% of bloggers have news as their primary topic."
News is a form of journalism, but not all journalism is news.
Considering that every day the "journalist" title is acquiring more of a negative conotation, it's no suprise. Journalists, similiar to most lawyers, are the low of the low. They have a vested interest in getting the most sensationalist stories. Not only does this lead to a career of ruthless backstabbing, among other high risk activities, it also can lead to a little exaggeration or even unverified hearsay.
I, for one, will be extremely satisfied when "Jouralist" becomes synonymous with "utter trash".
Given such low journalistic integrity, we should view the typical blog as merely an opinion piece.
Still, a blog is useful in offering a unique perspective on a political issue; this perspective can spur actual journalists to re-think the issues on which they report. For example, conservative blogs gave a convincing analysis questioning the veracity of documents presented by Dan Rather in his report aired on "60 Minutes". Soon afterwards, actual journalists examined the suspect documents in detail and concluded that their are likely fake. Rather eventually apologized for using unverified documents to slander a political candidate.
In short, blogs (like other forms of expression) play an important role in a democracy, but we should never use blogs as a final, reputable source on par with a story by actual journalists at "The Economist", the "Wall Street Journal", or the "New York Times". Conferring the status of journalist on the typical blogger is equivalent to saying that 4 years of undergraduate study leading to a journalism degree from Harvard University is a waste of time.
Not that this is really needed, but technically, bloggers ARE journalists, just not in the common print-media definition of such. I think that the Internet classifies as a MASS AUDIENCE, and many blogs are just personal journals. Now, how the law defines journalism is a different thing. The fact that people's perceptions of that definition will skew the numbers of such a study is very important, and there is this thing called trash journalism, yellow journalism etc. The point is that journalism takes several forms. Yahoo used to be just two guys that kept a list of links they found on the Internet. A blog today that is simply someone ranting about new pc hardware, can become a huge news resource in the future... as an example. The point is, the value of a blog as journalistic resource is completly reliant on the readers perception of value of said blog. If all you want to do is read about Brittany's new clothes, I'm pretty sure you won't be reading any respected 'journalist's' writing.
From www.m-w.com
Main Entry: journalist
Pronunciation: -n&-list
Function: noun
1 a : a person engaged in journalism; especially : a writer or editor for a news medium b : a writer who aims at a mass audience
2 : a person who keeps a journal
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Just because a group is mostly not journalists doesn't mean that the journalists in that group aren't journalists. There's even plenty of content in newspapers that isn't journalism, from opinion pieces to comics to movie reviews. Assuming that the 5% figure is correct, bloggers are far more likely than the rest of the population to be journalists, and they're probably more likely than the population of professional writers to be journalists.
It's a bit ironic that the article says that only a third of bloggers do journalistically appropriate tasks like linking to original sources, when Slashdot links to the original source, and the article doesn't.
This just in! 13-year-old girls exposing the sordid details of their lives is NOT journalism! More at 11.
Only 5% of world leaders are massuers.
:)
Only 5% of governors of California are film stars.
Only 5% of beer is alcohol.
Only 5% of Slashdot stories are dupes.
Only 5% of a woman's body is different from a man's.
Only 5% of English soccer fans are hooligans.
Sometimes, it's the exceptions that make things interesting
When i see how journalists reports on specific areas i cant stop wonder. Some topics i feel very interested and knowledged in. Big news outlets tends to always get those wrong. War reporting is amongst the worst of all. The truth seems very uninteresting in that area. Same goes for terrorism where the least interesting bit is telling the truth. I value reporting from a random blogger higher than anything from lets say CBS, Fox News, or some other bigshot western mews outlet. Thats because western journalism have proven itself not trustworthy.
So, in my world not being a journalist is actually a merit and not something bad.
HTTP/1.1 400
Only 5% of bloggers are journalists therefor it can't be journalism..... And if what is going on in a person's personal life, New Orleans, is important. Or if Politics, next election, are issues they wont have any protection because its not 'journalism'.
Own the papers, buy the journalists... then you can afford to have journalistic freedom but not if people can report on things themselves.
Discredit blogs and you begin destroying most grass roots information in the country.
If freedom of speakers rights matters it must be speech not job profile that is protected.
Judging from news coverage in much of this country even less than 5% of big media are journalists.
They do "Play one on TV" though.
LS
When the term became popular a couple of years ago the concept of "blogging" was seen as the online equivalent of daily journals, except that anyone could look in. Who says they all have to be journalists? Or, for that matter, why is the fact that "only 5% of bloggers are journalists" even noteworthy? Who cares? There's probably a percentage devoted to pets that the survey didn't uncover. What difference does it make? It's just another form of speech.
Maybe this isn't such a bad thing. In college I felt that my best professors were the active industry participants - those that knew the current state of the art. Bloggers, as workers or enthusiastic hobbyists in their respective fields, have more insight than the average journalist who must switch between topics on a regular basis. Sure we have to use a more critical eye with blogs than we do with say, the NYT, but given the things that have been exposed primarily through blogs within the last few years I can accept that. Their popularity and citation by major news outlets shows that others feel the same way.
I myself was curious about how you do a random sample of blogs. Apparently, Pew used a telephone survey whereby they first asked if the adult maintained a blog and then they did their survey based on those who claimed that they did. Their sample of the latter group was only 233.
You can find the actual study at the Pew website.
What about the evil force that bogs down the internet??
I'm pretty sure that if we could eliminate all the PORN of the servers we wouldn't use half the bandwidth available on the internet!
But then again what use could we make of so much bandwidth on our hands??
Hooray for the opposable thumbs!!
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
approximately 5% of slashdot stories are deemed to be newsworthy.
I wouldn't be surprised if only 5% of americans were journalists.
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
Blogging is not something new and revolutionary. It is the next evolution of maintaining a website. It really is a good example of software engineering moving website development forward. Standardized protocols, layout systems and a normal person-friendly user interface for everything.
WordPress and Movable Type are very good programs and have done wonders for maintaining a personal website. Now we can focus on the content, not the layout and maintainence because they offer powerful theme management and have very flexibly-designed systems for all common personal website needs. So what if most people use it for just yaking about their personal lives? What gives anyone the right to say that this is an invalid use of their time and money?
The only people crowing about blogging and journalism are the political bloggers who are eager to try to replace their print publishing counterparts--and they're not going to do it. The average major print publication is run by people who can keep going full time whereas most bloggers can't come even close.
Of course only 5 percent of bloggers are actual journalists. Most of us here know that blogging started out as nothing more than on-line diaries - that's what most of them still are (and, unfortunately, quite boring and vapid to boot). But the wider world didn't discover blogging until a few people (e.g. Drudge) started using the underlying technology as an quick-and-dirty publication mechanism. For those folks, THAT is what a blog is.
#DeleteChrome
What percentage of articles on "Slashdot: News for Nerds" are actually journalism?
Only 5% of 'journalists' are journalists.
Hear, hear.
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
In the hundred years or so in the 20th century, the majority of Americans learned to read well (functional literacy). It appears that in this century the majority of Americans will learn to write well.
I am only 24 and college educated but writing seems to be natural for me. However I am absolutely amazed at how my family and friends that are a bit older than I am cannot write as well as I can. I definitely think there is a generational gap here. And chat rooms, blogs, e-mail, instant messengers, etc are not only part of the cause, but also the result.
Over the course of a typical day I must write(type) pages and pages worth of text on all various mediums including Slashdot. Previous generations didn't have this need or ability thus they never became acclimated to expository writing on a daily basis. There are of course exceptions, but I would say that for the majority of the population expository writing en mass is new to society.
Libertas in infinitum
Duh!!! Blogs started as a convenient way to put up personal web pages for those who didn't want to delve into the technical details. It's only the mass media that latched onto the few blogs that compete as news outlets, and created silly words like "blogosphere", and created the impression among certain ill-informed people that blogs were primarily news outlets.
In a related story, Only a small percent of word processing software is used by journalists. Film at eleven.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Slashdot editors aren't journalists either.
Am I right?
I believe that few bloggers will refer to themselves as journalists not because of a lack of professionalism or a willingness to spread inaccurate information, but because other constraints that traditional journalists are under do not affect them.
Both in terms of choice of topics and in terms of language, traditional journalists are limited by the agenda of their medium and the whim of their publisher. They can't simply pick a topic that they're interested in (say a political one) one day and then write about their personal life the next. In addition, a certain register (linguistic label for a style of writing) is expected in traditional journalism, while you are free to express yourself however you like in your blog.
Blogs are largely written by consumers of news - it would be pretty surprising if bloggers made no effort to verify their sources, especially when all you need to do is check a few major news sites. What blogs do provide is additional commentary of news, something that hardly bodes well for op-ed columns. Perhaps you need a 'real' journalist to report the facts, but I don't necessarily think that only someone working for an established news source can have an intelligent opinion on the matter*.
* especially since newspapers tend to owned by companies
...he forgot one catagory. 27.28% of bloggers are talking about other blogs...meta-blogging, so to speak.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
While newspapers are not so skewed to personal life, I would say that this is not unlike the distribution of the average newspaper, which has a news section, a sports sections, and entertainment section, a business section, along with editorial.
The bulk of any newspaper is sports and other entertainment. Usually quite a bit of space is devoted to what are essentially the inane personal movements of people who really don't matter, for some people think they do. The thing is i think most people at a newspaper would consider themselves journalists, even it all they did was report on what Missy Elliot had for dinner last night.
If it is indeed true that 6% of the bloggers are dealing with hard news, and 11% are detailing political points of view, that is a some improvement over newspapers in which 90% if the non-ad paper is consumed with sport scores, celebrity tidbits, local gossip, and pointless editorials. Perhaps the newspaper will have better reporting, but on still has to wade through a lot of crap to find it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
journalist (jûrn-lst)
n.
1. One whose occupation is journalism.
2. One who keeps a journal.
By definition, 100% of bloggers are journalists.
Also there's nothing in the definition relating a journalist to writing about news.
If you include current events related to Linux, are you now a "journalist"?
What about current events regarding "pre-1662 hammared silver coins"? Such as new books being published or shows? Would that make you a "journalist" specialising in such coins?
Is someone who writes for a Linux magazine a "journalist"? Is someone who covers coin shows for a coin magazine a "journalist"?
When I see a study like this, I ask myself, what in the world is so interesting about what percentage of bloggers are seen to be journalists?
The only reason the "is a blogger a journalist" question ever comes up, is when people want to sue a blogger for things like not revealing sources, etc.
By claiming that a) protection of the freedom of the press only applies to some select bunch of bona fide journalists and that b) bloggers ain't them, they seek to basically harrass bloggers (and their sources) if a story carried by a blog is inconvenient.
Now, of course, this is riding rough shot with civil liberties. Anyone who publishes anything, to the extent that the content is of a journalistic nature, enjoys protection0s awarded to journalistic endeavour. It's the freedom of the press that's protected, not the freedom of a select bunch of bona fide accredited card-carying yale-educated fee-paying journalists.
That still doesn't stop, e.g. Apple, sueing blogs for dumb-ass reasons (and sometimes succeeding, though they really shouldn't in most cases).
But the question shouldn't be "are bloggers journalists" but "are we doing enough to ensure that all journalistic endeavour is protected, and that everyone can utilize their freedom of speech, and press, without fear for heavyhanded legal actions".
The answer to the first question is "to the extent their content is journalism, yes of course, duh, and by the by, that guy that draws Garfield isn't one either even if it is printed in a newspaper", the answer to the latter is "hell no".
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Calling anyone with a website who writes about something they saw on TV a journalist is kind of strange.
It's not just strange- it's wrong. My job title at one point was "Systems Engineer". I didn't have an engineering degree, and my father (who did) was severely irked, rightfully so; just because I came up with solutions involving computer systems did not make me an "engineer". This is the same kind of BS. "Journalist" is a professional title, and you can't slap it on a person simply because they yack about current events.
"Web loggers" point to FOX news and say "If THEY'RE journalists, I sure as hell am, especially since unlike them, I don't lie or distort things!" WRONG. FOX news staff are REPORTERS. If they went to school and studied journalism, THEN they are a journalist. Bill Oreilly is not a "journalist"; he's a cross between a commentator and a talk show host.
Go to Merriam-Webster and look up "journalism". Under "2B", you'll find "writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation". When anyone in the media talks about "journalism", that is the context they are referring to, not the OTHER definition of "someone who keeps a journal" (ie, diary.) Most of the "web loggers" who get up in a tizzy about this, compare themselves to professional journalists, which indicates they are using the 2B definition.
Most "web loggers" are PURELY in the business of interpreting news, events, or situations. That makes them news commentators ONLY!
Please help metamoderate.
"Just over a third of the bloggers said they often conduct journalistically appropriate tasks such as verifying facts and linking to source material."
And nearly all of those who verify their facts do so by finding somebody else online who makes the same claim. Of course those other people don't verify THEIR facts.
If you read a typical blog - even a "journalistic" one - with anything less than a pillar of salt, you're a fool.
"Has [slasdot editor] ever been considered and presented as a respectable profession by anyone other than [Taco and friends]?"
or
"Has [politics] ever been considered and presented as a respectable profession by anyone other than [politicians]?
or
"Has [slashdot poster] ever been considered and presented as a respectable profession by anyone other than [slashdotters]?
Um. Isn't this part of the definition of blogosphere?
What exactly is a sufficient in the verification of facts? I mean, if I'm making note of results at CERN or Saskatoon's Synchotron, should I go out and build one to make sure that they are not outright lying about their results? Or would asking the people who work there be enough? What about reading the actual papers where the results are discussed? Interviewing the experts in the feild? Talking to someone who is in the feild? Talking to someone, while outside of the feild, who has a zeal for the feild? Asking a scientist, outside the feild, with little interest in the feild, but who is known to be well informed? Asking a scientist? Asking a teacher/professor? What about a grad student? What about just some random luser?
We've seen the major newsmedia in the states completely led astray by the US government, Captain's Quarters recently led astray by israeli propeganda (even so much so that its members were starting to make comment of it) and countless other blogs, newspapers and tv news outlets screw up on an regular basis. So what would be an acceptable amount of verification? I'd imagine it'd depend on the topic, and the amount of controversy involved.
I guess my point of view comes from this: I've spent some time around journalists and they are the biggest drunkards, party animals, and sleazeballs I think I've ever come across. The closest I can come to explaining it is that Hunter S Thompson chose the right feild. And to think that they are somehow getting their facts objectively right, 100% of the time or something (something my grandpa warned me simply did not happen in the newspaper industry when he worked in it) is about as likely as their passing a breathalizer coming home from work. But supposing they did hold themselves to some sort of moral standard of evaluating and processing information, however base. What would it be? How do they keep their facts "straight"? Is it that when you're part of a large firm or institution that you can doublecheck your sources with a large amount of other sources, in which case wouldn't meta-blogs sort you out just as well?
My approach tends to be that for any issue 98% of my audience doesn't know about it, but 2% might, and that 2% will correct me if I screw up somewhere, and I will accept and make visible my mistakes, and that the 'wisdom of crowds' will keep me from going too far astray. This is also inspiration to gather as much of an audience as possible.
Here's an experiment you can do though; coming on the 29th of this month, there will be a decent cross section of the blogging community, blogging constantly at the Blogathon. Assemble a team and verify everything they say, and see how they do, and make note of the results.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Define "news".
Do you define it in terms of what the general public wants/needs to hear, or do you define it in terms of news in the personal sense? Arguably, my personal blog serves as a news outlet to those who know me - it's news about ME, and news that I choose to share with those who read my blog. Occasionally I'll pass on the story I read through a major news outlet, but mostly it's news about me that I want those close to me to know.
95% of statistics regarding blogs are made up on the spot. 98% of statistics regarding podcasts are made up.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/
Reconsider your source, since that site seems to be very closed minded enough that they wont accept criticism - try signing up there. Consider a source that *doesnt* seem to resemble an echo chamber.
saying that 4 years of undergraduate study leading to a journalism degree from Harvard University is a waste of time.
The connections you get in that place of exclusivity are enough to guarantee that you'll never view the population the same way you did when you entered.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most of them just go over to the newsfeed (Reuters etc), highlight some text and hit Ctl-C then over to their text editor and hit Ctl-V.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Not flamebait. I wouldn't say 100%, but a large enough portion of bloggers are trite, boring, self- or useless shit-obsessed humans to make blog-spotting an unforgiving task at best.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Just over a third of the bloggers said they often conduct journalistically appropriate tasks such as verifying facts and linking to source material.
And since when is that any different from 50% of the so-called "professional" journalists? How many times do we read slanted news, misrepresented facts and out-and-out unverified stories? Most journalists coming out of school see themselves as activists, not reporters. That's almost as bad as caring what Tom Cruise has to say about postpartum depression.
I have a degree in journalism and it's a shit degree. It's one step above an English or Liberal Arts major. Yeah, you may be able to write, but unless you become a f--kin' Tom Clancy, you're not going to get paid much for it. So you damn well better do it for the love of it. If you don't love it, you're better off with a business degree or something you can actually make a living at.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Well, I must say that the 5% of beer that's alcohol and the 5% of a woman's body that are different from a man's do interest me. However, let me state that I have absolutely no interest in the world leaders that are masseurs, or the governors of California that are film stars, or the English soccer fans that are hooligans.
Or in the Slashdot stories that are dupes, but are you sure those are exceptions? Some days dupes seem to be 95% of Slashdot...
Seriously, you don't mean that THIS is your view of journalism.
That slipup aside...
Blogs are closer to comic books than journalism. They're irregular, both in quantity, quality and substance. Some have a good run, some have spent months waiting for a post worth reading. Most appeal to only a handful of readers while some have a wider range of readers, despite the appearance of "sell-outs." There's a few great stories out there that quickly become shining examples of the medium while there are more than a few that are sub-par, even for their respective peers.
Some are little more than superficial viewings (here's what I liked about last week's Lost vs. here's Superman hitting Lex Luthor's new robot) some are in depth portraits of the world or wonderful character studies.
Both are meant to be disposable (Marvel isn't expecting you to carry around 500+ months of Fantastic Four history into every appearance, and it does realize that stories two years from now shouldn't expect you to carry each of the next set of issues with you) but have a nature that makes them surprisingly immortal (the collectibility and high prices of early comics destroyed by moms not realizing how much their children would fork out 30 years later for the same issue, bloggers who are suprised when their bitchfest from last year gets discovered or linked to by the latest blogger du jour.)
Or is your name Bob ? Or maybe Sally ?
I just want to know two statistics,
1) What percentage of bloggers thought they were going to get discovered by some kind of talent agency & hit the big time ?
2) What percentage of bloggers thought they were going to get rich by showing advertisements ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
It also depends on how you'd define journalism. There are a lot of people I know who have no journalism training, who I'd consider much better journalists than many of the paid front-line journalists for newspapers, TV and radio. There have been more than enough times when I've felt irritated that a journalist didn't actually know (or care) anything about what they were reporting about, at least as much as looking good, being noticed, and being entertaining.
The article itself claims that the 5% figure contradicts perceptions that weblogs are "remaking journalism", but the low figure isn't exactly a surprise for the reasons you and others have been mentioning. Personally I don't think the overall percentage itself isn't anywhere near as relevant as the small number of people who run high quality weblogs that really do provide better quality reporting than many recognised journalists. These weblogs are directly accessible, and usually free, unlike a lot of traditional reporting. The biggest problem I see with weblogs is that it now becomes the reader who has to decide what's worth reading, instead of an editor.
The headline is indeed misleading. After reading "Only 5% Bloggers are Journalists", I expected an article about how only 5% of bloggers have actually studied in the field of journalism in college.
according to Princeton, at least, anyone who keeps a journal is a journalist. Just like anyone who keeps a diary is a diarist.
See for yourself.
This is an attack on the freedom of the press, pure and simple.
How many 'journalists' today are merely shills for corporations to advertise? Or followers of ideas they hope resound with their readership? Creators of artificial controversy, PR companies, government cowered mouthpieces, or simply blatant liars?
When you take money away from an endeavour, (mostly) only the pure of motive have an incentive to perform it.
Its happened in software. The most innovative and creative software is written by people who do it just for fun, or for idealistic reasons. Similarly, those who are driven to write about world events do so from their own beliefs rather than thier desire to get paid/rewarded. The end result is more worthwhile. Its one of the reasons I don't have a TV any more.
Will we see shortly the headline "Only 10% of children who draw thier parents birthday cards have artistic merit"?
Look at who is reporting this, and who stands to lose. I for one welcome the democratisation of 'news'.
For sure we'll see less advertising.
Jon
- 5% of bloggers have news as their primary topic
- 37 percent of the surveyed blogs were reporting on their personal life
- 11 percent on political matters
- 7 percent on entertainment
- 6 percent on sport
And the remaining 34% could not be categorized as researchers fell asleep reading those pages.(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What the fuck makes you think a reporter is different from a journalist?
Blogging is just like photography. Everyone with a blog thinks they're 1 step away from earning a living as a big time journalist. Imagine if everyone who owned a camera thought they were 1 step away from being the 2nd coming of Ansel Adams?
The bulk of these blogs are uninteresting, boring crap. I can think of 3 that I read, and that's because they are written by people in my line of work. And I rarely read them more than 3 times a week. If I missed a week, it wouldn't kill me.
I know at least 3 people that have changed their lives in order that they get home and update their blogs. It's like they feel that others are depending on them updating their crappy little lives online. One guy average 238 hits per week. Frankly, I think it's his Mom that accounts for 200 of the 238 hits to his blog... but this guy races home to update his blog.
Actually, that should be 'blogs' are like assholes...
Correct me if I'm wrong..
journalist - One who keeps a journal
"blog" - an online diary
diary - A daily record, especially a personal record of events, experiences, and observations; a journal.
Now doesnt that make anyone that has a "blog" have an online diary which is a synonym for an online journal? Therefor having a blog makes your a journalist. Otherwise it isn't a blog...
37% personal life
11% political matters,
7% entertainment
6% sports
about 35% often verify facts and link to sources
I look at cable/"broadcast" news TV, newspapers and radio content, and I see no meaningful distinction. Except maybe blogs have swapped "personal life" and "entertainment", and "political matters" and "sports" ratios.
The medium and mode of publishing what you think about your world doesn't make or break you as a "journalist". Neither does any specific editing process, especially as editors merely keep lookout for whatever the mass of publishers are publishing, not for what's actually happening.
The only distinction left between good and bad journalism is accuracy and timeliness. Both of which are much more in the hands of the consumer to check. Google is a great resource. But with so many publishers, so many bought by vested interests, so many so transient, I think "rating communities" of people we trust, in degrees of separation, is the only way to tell. I'd rather subscribe to a group with whom I correspond about our "editorial views", who collectively cross-reference all our various sources.
--
make install -not war
11% is an awfully large percentage to be written off as "not news." I run a political blog, and it's all news. Most of the political blogs are, with commentary added by the blogger.
That "5%" figure is absolute nonsense.
MySpace has 95 million members, increasing by 500,000 per week. Each MySpace member's page can be used as a "blog". There is no possible way of telling whether a specific MySpace user intends for their page to be part of the blogosphere or not, so it must be assumed that all are "blogs".
Do the math: MySpace supposedly has 5 MILLION JOURNALISTS.
This immediately shows that the "5%" figure is wrong by several orders of magnitude.
Sometimes journalists must choose between keeping a blog and keeping their day job. Because I work at a newspaper, a place where ethics guidelines to protect "objectivity" include "No bumper stickers" and "No political yard signs," I can't put my opinions out there - especially ones about politics and current events. It would "compromise" the paper's neutrality, or so I've been told.
Those bloggers who are NOT working at a newspaper, TV station, etc. have much more freedom.
Unless he's not referring to the quote about everybody having opinions. Maybe he's just calling bloggers assholes?
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Calling anyone with a website who writes about something they saw on TV a journalist is kind of strange.
You could say the same thing about anyone with a newspaper press who writes articles and hands their paper out on the subway to try and make a buck. Focusing on the manner of delivery rather than the form of the writing is a mistake.
That said, I'd think we would be much better off using the word "reporter" to mean someone who reports facts that they have collected and verified themselves from an objective viewpoint, rather than the seemingly more loosely defined word "journalist".
Really the word "Journalist" itself does not imply quality nor any particular achievement on the part of the writer. Same as the label "Poet" or "Playwright" it merely indicates the form of writing.
a virgin.
I'd say just under 5% of journalists have news as their primary topic...
Those that pursue a career in the English language provide far more societal worth than the schlubs at the local rag.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
1. Why we hate work so much.
2. Who we like and don't like, in Hollywood.
3. What we did over the weekend.
4. Where we went on vacation. (Hollywood?)
5. When will we have the vacation pictures posted? (I mean, it's been 2 DAYS, now!)
VOTE!
Shouldn't Sturgeons Law be applied to the printed press aswell?
Ok, I don't normally grouse about getting modded flamebait (in fact, I usually enjoy it), but, no. My above post is not flamebait.
I can guess the group alignment of the guy who flamebaited me. Someone who's in the "Blogs are the only form of truly free speech left!"
Yeah. Take yourself seriously. Please. Someone's got to.
No, really. You're free to speak. That's not to say you're worth listening to.
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What's a journal for again?
Oh, yes. That's right. Keep track of your daily life and the events therein. Kind of like a diary, really. That way, if anything truly interesting happens in your life, it's recorded into history. Like say, if an 10.5 earthquake were to strike and wipe out the city you live in. Then you (or historians, for that matter) can look back on your life as it was before, what life was like trying to recover from the event, and how your life had changed afterwards.
Personally, I started a blog during a major event at my workplace that happened shortly before I was married. I work at an ISP, and one summer several years ago it was hell on wheels for several months as our servers, our ISP, our telco, and our network all conspired to make our customers' lives difficult. I started to wonder if this sort of thing had happened in the early days of the telephone network, and we had learned through painful experience how this new technology needed to be made better.
Just because occasionally, shit happens in people's lives that really, truly *is* news (say, if I were vacationing in Beruit this past week) and they happen to write about it in their personal journals, does not make them journalists. However, for some bizarre reason professional journalists seem to think that this is the case, and that they're competing with them.
No, at best Livejournal is the diary of Anne Frank. Before it was published. If it had been published (as Livejournal does) as it was happening, I suppose that would have been news or something. But that wouldn't really make Anne Frank a journalist, would it?
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
No sh!t, Sherlock.
Which is prolly the same as many actual journos themselves. After all, how many reporters ever question what their told in Govt news conferences, particularly ones in which dubious facts are paraded out regarding a country targeted by the chicken-hawks for invasion. Not many.
For instance, prior to the 2nd Gulf War, media outlets happily spun the propagranda line that Iraq had x amounts of WMD waiting to be unleashed, when any checking of the facts would've revealed that Iraq's capacity to produce WMDs had been destroyed by the Allies in Gulf War I. Moreover, any lingering WMDs would have been useless by the advent of GWII because the chemicals dissolve into harmless goo over time. Of course, the Govts knew this. But more importanly they knew the people didn't know, and knew also that reporters would happily swallow the lies and regurgitate them later in their papers and TV news programmes because they never check up on facts.
So the issue is, what's the big deal that bloggers don't necessarily cross-reference the stories they blog. What does it matter that they maybe report hearsay as absolute fact when it's perhaps nothing of the sort. After all, the real media do this also, only thousands of times worse, since they reach out to larger audiences/markets.
5% News
37% Personal life
11% Politics
7% Entertainment
6% Sports
Looks in line with television "news" channels. Bloggers really are the new journalists!
Don't believe me? Get interviewed.
Bloggers are much, much better at getting the facts right than are journalists. Journalists write the article before they research the facts, if they ever research the facts. It's a shame they're so stupid they can't spell "prejudice."
Bloggers have the facts first before they write (indeed it's often why they write) and feedback fact-checking after, and the corrections get put right next to the errors.
It's a damn good thing only 5% of bloggers are journalists. Journalists SUCK.
I'm pretty sure this is 20% "we're real news outlets/bloggers are just bored amateurs" and 80% "holy crap! we're losing market share to *bloggers* !!"
The original blurb I heard was something like "Bloggers are mainly storytellers, not journalists." How ridiculous. What is "the news" if it is not storytelling? Sure, it has shiny features like talking heads, crawling news updates, and billions of dollars invested, but it's still just storytelling. FFS, they introduce features as "stories". There's "Today's Top Story", and the hopefully-adrenaline-releasing phrase, "Late-Breaking Story" (now reduced to simply "Breaking Story").
Ontologically speaking, the whole thing is a story. A story, by definition, is one's interpretation of What Happened. Most of us spend 100% of our time thinking that a story is what happened, but it's not. It's simply the story of what happened, as invented/told/repeated by someone else.
(the corollary--which is also the answer to the Zen koan about the tree falling in the forest--is left as an exercise to the reader)
My story about this story is that the mainstream media is feeling more threatened than usual, lately.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
So what percentage of journalists are bloggers?
I don't know about that, but in other news 95% of the bloggers' feelings just got hurt, and they are now whining about it on LiveJournal and MySpace.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I think journalist dont use blogs becouse there are better tools or journalist. In internet is a lot of webservices for citizen journalist, which can publish any kind of material without agreement of redactions. for exammple: http://ohmynews.com/ http://reporter.co.za/ or in Poland http://www.ithink.pl./ That kind of webpresence make Journalist more independent in readers eyes.
(I buy specials at the store, and do special things for my wife all the time - does that make me a 'specialist'. Not in the usual sense of the word, no.)
Huh? The definition hasn't been hijacked. The one trying to redefine the term into meaninglessness is you. The survey is using the term in the form it's been defined for over a century.
Surveys with narrow, old-media-focused definitions aside, anybody who keeps a public journal is a journalist. Some are amateurs, some are professionals. I work in a newsroom in my day job, and the topic of what is and isn't news is regularly discussed, and anything of interest to the public is the basic common ground usually found in the debate. If I have 100 readers at my blog find it useful one month, 100 people find my blog to be "news", while one million readers probably find my employer's news pages useful - thus making me underground news and my employer, mainstream news. It's really all about job protection and cartels, this talk of only 5% of bloggers being journalists.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1