Blog on What Ye Want, Just not News
Over the past few years, blogs have become a standard online entity. Thanks to a variety of free blogging interfaces, anyone with an interest in writing for the public may do so. People blog on everything from sports to technology to politics to cat grooming to education. For the average Internet user this probably marks a positive transformation towards a more egalitarian cyber landscape in which everyone has a chance to speak. Prior to the rise of Twitter “reporting,” blogs were the most significant outlet for i-reporting, news and event reporting done by the average, untrained individual. However, from the perspective of the media gatekeepers, those whom we used to entrust with filtering news as it passed through the gates of the media, the rise of the blogging culture marks a dangerous transformation in the public’s relationship to news.
First of all, because blogs vary so drastically in content and purpose, it is impossible to discuss the entire blogosphere as one giant lump. This is why it is important to make distinctions between problematic pseudo-news blogs and other, helpful, and entertaining, blogs. Perhaps the only problematic type of blog is the one that attempts to inform on public affairs and events, often trying to demand the same authority as news outlets. Other kinds like opinion, computer support, film, arts, and environment blogs are, for the most part, great.
Most blogging activity does in fact signify the proliferation of the public voice in previously elite areas. Now the casual citizen can talk about politics; the avid gardening fan can give soil advice; the ambitious cook can document her journey cooking through Julia Child’s recipes. The problem emerges when ordinary people try to cover serious, national, and world news in lieu of traditional news reporting. As people’s mistrust of large corporations expands to include news agencies, many look elsewhere for their news, which is one reason i-reporting is so appealing—it’s reporting from the people for the people. In truth though, this is an absurd dynamic. The “people” simply do not have the same training or resources as professional journalists.
To keep up with these trends in news blogging, traditional news reporters are often forced to maintain their own blogs. Though harmless on the surface, this phenomenon defies the traditionally staunch separation of news and opinion. In many ways, by opining on the same topics on which they report, journalists are committing the same industry faux pas as registering with a political party, something that is generally not permitted for reporters in order to ensure fair and unbiased reporting.
In the end, the dynamics of blogging are still emerging, so we have to carefully interact with this relatively modern aspect of the cyber world until it takes a stable form. When it comes to news, there’s still no alternative to real news sources like The New York Times, the BBC, or CNN. Simply put, these institutions spend lots of money covering the news accurately and efficiently. Bloggers have no primary contact with news, and don’t have the resources that newspapers and television reporters do.
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