Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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"?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree with you on all point but one:
...
Sure we have to use a more critical eye with blogs than we do with say, the NYT,
Given recent experience with reporting by major media outlets, including especially the NYT (along with CBS and NBC), I'd say that one must use AT LEAST as much, if not more, of a critical eye on such major media outlets as one does on a blog by a "worker or enthusiastic hobbiest" in the relavant field.
The major media's track record is abysmal: Agenda-driven bias, lack of fact-checking and outright fabrication, failure of administrative mechanisms to keep employees conforming to standards of honesty and objectivity. Worst of all are their attempts to influence politics by distorted reporting - something that they occasionally even admit to, or even brag about.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
5% of 100 million is 5 million. The nature of the mainstream media presents an ever-narrowing number of people that provide actual insight into current events in the mainstream media. Niche topics have always been incredibly limited in the MSM, confined to expensive quarterlies and trade magazines.
The blogosphere solves all this, and broadens the journalistic community that the average media-savvy person experiences in their life from maybe 5 key policy makers, 50 public faces, and 500 writers, to a peer-linking meritocratic network in the hundreds of thousands with public feedback. This exposes them to the words of hundreds of individuals in an hour of following heavily networked blogs, untainted by any mandatory viewpoints that a hierarchical organizational and ownership structure imposes - and it provides an ideal community for narrower topics to be covered in more breadth than they ever have before.
The point made in the summary is a fallacy - 100 blogs covering news COULD revolutionize journalism. That wouldn't be diminished by 10 million other blogs covering what color the belly button lint of their favorite bands is.
As for diaries and journals - I know people who keep the dead tree form that will compulsively rush off to write in them. Having an audience of a hundred people reading them regularly has a non-surprising effect on the person's interest in them.
Yes, having a blog is like owning a camera - but that doesn't mean that cameras didn't revolutionize the picture-conveying industry.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation