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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Is it the end of journalism as we know it? Or just 6 zillion writers in search of an editor? Neither.
May 10, 2002 | "Not another piece on blogs!" The reporter threw back her head in mock anguish.
"Well, sure, we covered it ages ago, but the phenomenon keeps getting more attention," the editor replied.
"But there's nothing new to say."
"Well, we could do a 'Blogs -- pro and con' point/counterpoint kind of thing."
"That's so tired. Anyway, who'd do the pro side?"
"Well, I would."
The above discussion actually took place here at Salon. It represents a slight, informal example of something called "the editorial process" -- something that happens at professional journalistic operations like Salon or your morning newspaper. It is not something that happens, at least not in this way, with the great majority of blogs.
Blogs, of course (or weblogs, the more formal name -- I hate the abbreviation, with its jiggly blob, melted-dessert overtones, but it's stuck), are personal Web sites, solo operations updated daily or more frequently with news and links and personal comments, piled up on a page in reverse chronological order. They have recently become the topic du jour among the media whose job it is to follow Web trends -- a beat whose pickings have lately been lean.
Typically, the debate about blogs today is framed as a duel to the death between old and new journalism. Many bloggers see themselves as a Web-borne vanguard, striking blows for truth-telling authenticity against the media-monopoly empire. Many newsroom journalists see bloggers as wannabe amateurs badly in need of some skills and some editors.
This debate is stupidly reductive -- an inevitable byproduct of (I'll don my blogger-sympathizer hat here) the traditional media's insistent habit of framing all change in terms of a "who wins and who loses?" calculus. The rise of blogs does not equal the death of professional journalism. The media world is not a zero-sum game. Increasingly, in fact, the Internet is turning it into a symbiotic ecosystem -- in which the different parts feed off one another and the whole thing grows.
Weblogs -- which often consist of annotated links to media Web sites as well as to other blogs -- would barely be able to get by without the informational fodder provided by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, time-strapped reporters and editors in downsized, resource-hungry newsrooms are increasingly turning to blogs for story tips and pointers. No one has enough time to read everything on the Web; blogs offer a smart reader the chance to piggyback on someone else's reading time. Good journalists would be fools not to feed off blogs.
Weblogs expand the media universe. They are a media life-form that is native to the Web, and they add something new to our mix, something valuable, something that couldn't have existed before the Web.
