Blogs Are Just the Medium, not a Profession

The debate has been raging for at least a month about what defines a journalist and what defines a blogger.

It's an interesting debate, but it seems to assume that all bloggers are alike, which they're not.

My take on the subject is that a blogger is someone who publishes information or opinion or images on a web site that allows regular postings, links to other web sites or blogs, and usually allows some method of commenting or trackbacking, so someone wanting to get different views on the topic at hand can follow the conversation in the Comments section or across several blogs.

A journalist is someone who participates in the preparation or publication of information, opinion or images that are meant to inform or entertain the intended audience.  The form of publication could be by broadcast, narrowcast, blog, newspaper, magazine, zine, web site, e-mail, pamphlet, billboard, or even shouting in the village square.

A blogger can be a professional journalist, an unpaid journalist, a hobbyist, a deranged sociopath, a poet, an artist, a pornographer, a diarist or all of the above.

Weblogs are really just a medium that can be used for many different purposes by many different kinds of people acting in many different roles. 

The fact that many people who use blogs are opinionated, shoot-from-the-hip amateur pundits  doesn't mean bloggers are automatically limited to that kind of activity.

Weblogs can be as varied as the authors want them to be.

If people want to debate the difference between journalists and raving lunatics (assuming there is a difference), or between journalists and partisan idealogues, go right ahead.  But comparing journalists and bloggers is useless, since the two are not mutually exclusive, so what you say about one group can automatically apply to the other.

Maybe we need a new term for the kind of blogger these commentators seem to be talking about. Until then, lumping all bloggers together and making sweeping statements is as useful as trying to categorize all people who use cell phones or felt pens as a certain personality type.

A Sampling of Postings on this Topic

Peter West: Journalism vs. Blogging
Neville Hobson: Blogs & Journalism Panel Discussion at NewComm Forum
Shel Holtz: The Wrong Queston
Dan Gillmor: More on Who's a Journalist; Defending Journalism, Deciding Who's a Journalist; Note to Business Week: Bloggers Aren't Immune to Libel Law
Jeremy Wright: Bloggers Aren't Ethical
Jack Shafer: Bloggers Freer than Reporters?
John Hiler:  Are Bloggers Journalists?
Apophenia: Are Bloggers Journalists? Wrong Question
Gary Goldhammer:  What Is Journalism? Don't Ask the National Press Club
Dana Blankenhorn: Is Blogging Journalism?

Comments

[Jack Krupansky]

I would agree that we clearly need better definition for the terminology.

I would recast your statement "A journalist is someone who participates in the preparation or publication of information, opinion or images that are meant to inform or entertain the intended audience" as "A journalist or blogger is someone who participates in the preparation and publication of information, opinion or images that are meant to inform or entertain the intended audience."

Please note the use of RSS feeds as a *publication* medium, distinct from the blogs themselves, which are micro-web sites. People "subscribe" to blog web feeds much as they would subscribe to a non-blog form of media. This formalized connection between audience and content creator is significant and in itself warrants treatment of bloggers at least partially the way journalists are treated.

Journalists can clearly also be bloggers. Obviously not all bloggers are employed by non-blog/RSS media organizations.

Unless we want to bite the bullet and say that blogging really is, by definition, a form of journalism, we need an umbrella term that includes both journalists and bloggers, at least as far as "someone who participates in the preparation and publication of information, opinion or images that are meant to inform or entertain the intended audience."

Lacking a formal term, for now, journalists and bloggers are both "content creators".

Maybe the distinction is that journalists themselves don't directly engage in publication, although they are certainly "involved". Typically the editorial staff is taking the journalist's "content" and then making decisions, copy editing, and then initiating publication. Blogger do it all. I click the "Publish Post" button and unedited (self-edited) content is "published" and immediately made avavilable to my audience. In this sense, bloggers are more than just "mere" journalists.

Blogging can in fact be a profession for some, but it may simply be one job function for other professions (non-blog media journalists, marketeers, PR firms, etc.)

But yes, blogs (and RSS feeds) by themsleves are simply a new form of media.

-- Jack Krupansky

[Jozef Imrich]

I could not disagree less ... (I could not agree more ;-D

Jay Rosen also compiled a generous pendulum of links at his Press Think site:

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/01/15/berk_pprd.html

[Bloggers v. Journalists is Over]

[Eric Eggertson]

Joseph: I like the way you restated it so that journalists and bloggers are esstentially doing the same thing. Quite true, and more elegant than the way I described it. Nice blog, by the way.

Jozef: Thanks for the link. I'll take a look at ROsen's list. I love the quote on your site: Do not be afraid your life will end. Be afraid it will never begin. Right on.

[Jozef Imrich]

Your links and observations are appreciated Eric...

A specter of misclassification haunts every Journo-blogger-storyteller as every story has many sides and requires different level of courage and skills (holy time v. clock time) ;-D

A true/pretended/something-in-between storyteller is ultimately in an eye of the bereader (sic). I came across many deep pieces of journalism inside samizdat magazines under communism yet those who wrote those risque exposes rarely considered themselves as journalists...

Three days after my original 30th birthday and a year before the Iron Curtain came down, Gerald Priestland, British broadcaster with the BBC Radio said:

"Journalists belong in the gutter becase that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets."

The bottom line is that Gerald's definition would exclude many journalists and bloggers ;-P