The question of whether or not to edit blogs that report the news is one of the biggest problems with weblogs facing the journalism industry. One of the weblog’s greatest appeals when used to report the news is the spontaneous nature of the medium. However, when a weblog is edited, this appeal is lost as the blog not only takes longer to release, but it also loses the edge it may have had by being the first to release a story. It is arguable though, that any news source must be edited to avoid the inclusion of biased or offensive content. Blogs are no different to any other news source in this situation, so perhaps the editing process is necessary.
One of the first and most popular blogs by a journalist was Daniel Weintraub’s article for the Sacramento Bee, ‘The California Insider’. The article began as an unedited commentary on the California state election in 2002, but a few weeks before the election a candidate complained about how he was treated by Weintraub, and The Bee began editing his weblog. As a result, many readers were turned off the blog as they believed it had become less spontaneous and ‘spunky’. (Heyboer, 2003) This would likely happen to most blogs if they went from being unedited to edited, as being spontaneous is one of the advantages weblogs have over other methods of reporting the news. Danny Dickfos. Furthermore, editing the blog would take time, and further diminish another advantage of weblogs. For this reason, it is arguable that editing a weblog defeats the purpose of using it to report news in the first place.
The editing process is primarily put in place to avoid the inclusion of biased and offensive content, and these things cannot be ignored when included in a blog. If a weblog goes unedited, the news source loses all credibility, as it could quite easily could contain inaccurate information or be biased to advantage or disadvantaged any given entity. For example, politicians believed Weintraub’s weblog was biased, so they asked for it to be edited. Another example is an unedited blog by Gregg Easterbrook in The New Republic magazine, which featured anti-semitic remarks that when unchanged and were viewed by the whole world. It seems essential that weblogs are edited to avoid the inclusion of offensive and biased content, and also grammar and spelling mistakes.
Editing weblogs would also help overcome some of the other problems, by avoiding the inclusion of content that is too personalised and that doesn’t add anything to the reporting of the news.
Bray, Hiawatha. (2003) "Conflict on Iraq Gives Rise to Journalists' Online Diaries" Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, Mar 24, 2003. pg. 1
Halloran, Liz. (2004) "Web diarists at political convention fall short of fresh, irreverent analysis" Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, Jul 29, 2004. pg. 1.
Heyboer, Kelly. (2003) “Bloggin’ in the Newsroom,� American Journalism Review, Vol.25, Iss. 8; Dec., p. 10.
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Matthew Prentice 22:36, 28 Oct 2004 (EST)
