Blog-Bashing: Just Another Turf Fight?
Nobody likes it when someone else tries to take over their turf, so the derision journalists display when they talk and write about bloggers is understandable. There are many bad blogs out there-- and I don't refer to just those blogs that are really just personal diaries. Some of the copy filed from political bloggers at the Democratic National Convention is worse than banal; and here I include copy from established journalists, not just the 30 or so webloggers who crashed the establishment media party with press credentials.
Bloggers are getting roughed up in print. This piece in the Hartford Courant is typical. It makes good points about the inexperience of bloggers, but the piece misses a lot of points as well.
Journalists are feeling a little smug because many do not see how blogs could possibly change journalism. The debate over what blogs mean for journalism is probably becoming beside the point; most people will not recognize the impact until those changes are about to give way to more changes. NYU prof Jay Rosen has a very stimulating blog for anyone who wants to understand PressThink; he's been writing about the journalistic response to blogging
It's hard to do a good blog that adds something to the cybersphere. I am not a fan of many of Andrew Sullivan's ideas, but I greatly admire the way he is able to blog a few times each day. I began introducing blogging to my students in fall 2001. We were all experimenting and not sure what to expect. Some students proceeded with earnest; others were less committed. We blogged again last spring, once again with varying results. It is a risky project because it puts bad grammar and other writing problems on display for the world to see. Beyond that, it takes a lot of time. My students had to blog at least once a week for 9 weeks to earn a B for the blogging portion of our Web Journalism class ( higher grades went to those with good ideas and sharp writing), which was about 30% of the final grade. As students observed, "Blogging is a lifestyle." It didn't fit with most of their lives beyond the semester requirement.
During our wrap-up discussion, most students said they did not think blogging was journalism; some seemed to feel that editors and a publishing organization are needed to confer true journalism status. I was surprised by their conservatism. Perhaps they feel this way because they are striving toward careers and need the legitimacy bestowed by the first journalism job. Perfectly understandable.
Of course, there are many poor examples of blogging out there. If one doesn't spend a lot of time sifting through them, the future of blogging doesn't look so bright. But the picture is so much more complicated, as Mark Glaser explains in this link-heavy analysis of blogging and the Democratic National Convention. One of the surest signs that big-time journalists know that blogs have something to offer is that Dan Rather and others put up blogs for the convention. I'm not convinced that imitation may not be the surest form of flattery, but elite journalism's clumsy efforts to co-opt the blogging indicates it understands bloggers are on to something-- even if that something is not yet clear to bloggers or journalists.
