Blogging has been heralded as the “ground zero of the personal web-casting revolution� (Lasica, 2003) and is undoubtedly an integral part of the media dialogue. It looks to be a publishing revolution more profound than the printing press. “Blogging could be to words, what music was to Napster – except this time, it’ll really work� (Sullivan, 2002). There is no doubt that blogging is to be a permanent fixture on the media horizon of the future. Blogging is undoubtedly a phenomenon that demands attention and opinions lean towards a synergistic and collaborative future.
Andrews (in Lasica, 2002) states that fact verification is the issue that will make or break the journalistic future of blogging. He suggests that if bots can link one blogger to other bloggers whose ideas match criteria set up, then it has the potential to evolve to a different kind of journalism. A new kind of journalism that is based on ‘raw feed’, based directly on the source. This is made possible by weblogs that make any piece of personal writing public. Suddenly the information available becomes more diverse, enlightening and transformative than traditionally based print media.
Hiler(2002)too predicts a similar future for blogging. He argues that bloggers are at the best when seeking out new stories and new leads, putting together the new, bigger picture. Journalists however excel at putting the tough pieces of the new leads and new stories together. Journalists excel at the primary research necessary to flesh out the new stories. The phone calls, interviews and fact checking. This creates a synergy between the journalism and the webloggers. Weblogging provides a powerful new way to cover stories and journalists provide the means to research and synthesize complex stories. Hiler illustrates this point with the following example:
While bloggers may not have broken the Watergate, you can bet they would have blogged the heck out of the story, hashing out its implications on Metafilerand kuro5hin.
Thus, simplistically, the relationship between the two will be one similar to that of breaking news for journalists and analysis for webloggers.
Collaborative Media, as defined by John Hiler, is a whole gaggle of bloggers, working together to perform an act of journalism. Kuro5hinis an example of collaborative media. The software used by this site enables 3 features that allows multiple people to contribute to story.
This enables great analysis rather than breaking news. While many sites do not have the technology of Kuro5hinembedded in them, other sites, like BlogDex and Daypop are emerging that allow bloggers to know who else is linking to a given story. Sites like Kuro5hin provide a forum for centralized community based, grass roots reporting.
Another possible outcome for blogging could be that it provides a source of story ideas for journalists. Collaborative media means that bloggers are breaking more and more stories and therefore journalists are drawn to the pool of ideas and discussion.
Conversely Branscum (in Lasica, 2002) argues that without established credibility with major publications, web credibility is impossible. Thus online bloggers becoming journalists, and collaborative media will not be taken as seriously as traditional journalists. If your name is not associated with an accredited establishment there is little chance for fact checking and reliable information. Branscum states that the future of journalists as bloggers is an issue too of remuneration. Until a way is made to pay journalists for weblogs the best efforts of independent journalists will go to paying publications and online institutions. Branscum sees blogs as an exercise in self indulgence as essentially the independent journalist is simply writing for themselves.
Blogging and Journalism are bound for a synergistic future. They will come to rely on each other in a manner so that one cannot subsist without the other. As audiences consumer more and more different kinds of media and turn from non-traditional news sources, the weblogs and bloggers will become increasingly more important. However journalism will not be obliterated as they possess the skill and tools to research and diligently check facts ensuring accuracy and truth.
Other pages of interest in terms of the future for journalism may include:
Back to Ethics in Blogging
Back to Validity of Blogging
Back to Blogging -New Audience Relationships
Back to Corporate_Blogging
Camilla Northcote 19:25, 27 Oct 2004 (EST)
