What's happening is a small but significant change in our media ecology. All journalists worth their salt have always known that out there are readers, listeners or viewers who know more about a story than they do. But until recently, there was no effective way for this erudition or scepticism to find public expression. Letters to the editor rarely attract public attention - or impinge on the consciousness of journalists.
Blogging changes all that. Ignorant, biased or lazy journalism is instantly exposed, dissected and flayed in a medium that has global reach. (If you doubt that, ask Dan Rather and CBS.)
A David Shaw doesn't like us though.
Blogging, Shaw writes, is a 'solipsistic, self-aggrandising, journalist-wannabe genre'. Bloggers are 'practitioners of what is at best pseudo-journalism' and 'many bloggers ... don't seem to worry much about being accurate'.
5 comments:
"solipsistic, self-aggrandising, journalist-wannabe genre'.
Well that's as maybe but is people want to write them it's no worse that the solipsistic, self-aggrandising, journalists like Richard Littlejohn, many of us are commenting on what is going on in our lives, and the world in the same way as Littlejohn and his ilk. It's just a different audience. They just don't like knowing that they are not all seeing all knowing and all opinion forming.
I wish you hadn't mentioned Richard Littlejohn. In any context at all.
"and 'many bloggers ... don't seem to worry much about being accurate'."
That's rich!
Kettle: Hello?
Pot: Hello, Kettle?
Kettle: Yes.
Pot: Guess what? You're black!
Kettle: Really!? Well thanks so much for clearing that up!
I agree with all of you. And, just as in trad 'journalism' there is wide range of standards between and within particular newspapers/media bodies and indidivual 'journalists' , the same goes for blogging and bloggers. To have the lowest-standard trad slag off blogging en masse is so ridiculous as to be hilarious.
Blogs and blogging (however they are defined and whatever use they are or will be put to)are here to stay.
And Chrisine-- are you blowing a bubblegum bubble or a bubble-brew bubble, or?????
What about accountability? At the end of the day, if I have to pick between a journalist or a blog for actual news, I'd still have to go with the journalist.
This isn't to say that there aren't honest blogs and dishonest journalists, but the journalist still has to be accountable for what he or she writes, whereas the blogger can fabricate at will. The blogger isn't accountable to anyone else but himself.
Honestly? I don't read blogs for news. I read them for opinion and insight.
(just jennifer)
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