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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.'"
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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?
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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.
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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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
hmm.
Has journalism ever been considered and presented as a respectable profession by anyone other than journalists?
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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.
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"?
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".
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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.
The question that immediately sprung to my mind: what percentage of journalists conduct journalistically appropriate tasks such as verifying facts and linking to source material?
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.
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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.
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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.
- 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.
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!
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
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.
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