Another point: have you noticed some of the best bloggers (content-wise) are also journalists? Journalistic training helps with tight writing, heds that cause people to stick around and insight that is deeper than the usual blogging. Its not coincidental. The other bloggers of interest are usually experts in some area, whether they are Google employees who can break some ground, a Microsoft person who can offer context or someone else with specific knowledge. Blogging has become another source for raw news, not simple babble about the day. As people begin to expect more from bloggers, the number of casual bloggers will level off and we will see the rise of another information source. Will bloggers live up to that responsibility, or simply become lost in an ocean of mediocrity? Now that is the question which interests me.

Ed

Martin

Not at my newspaper, it doesn’t.

Journalism today is a highly-specialized craft turned profession. Today’s journalists are trained and abide by a code (however questionable) of ethics. Journalism is not a hobby nor something you fit into your lifestyle, somewhere between your day job and nightclubbing.

While bloggers today have a tenous and somewhat esoteric connection to their audience, journalists are directly responsible to an editor, who is responsible to an executive editor who is responsible to a publisher. Such strict chain-of-command often filters out errors, factual mistakes and problematic judgement.

Can bloggers be journalists? Certainly, but it requires discipline and a decision to make fact-finding your primary goal. Regurgitating the AP, NYT or another news service without any original reporting is not journalism, but reprinting. It also requires blogging develop a critical eye. Too often blogger pile onto a mistake made by the mainstream media, but hesitate to criticize the faults of other bloggers, lest they be isolated from the sometimes incestuous rounds of self-congratulatory comments.

Bloggers can be journalists, but first they must adopt some professional standards.

Ed

Journalists are objective; Bloggers are biased
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Now thats good comedy.

What I haven’t seen here is the fact that the EICs determine what news is newsworthy for their press. They determine what we stories we, journalists will cover. As a blogger, I make the choice of what I think is newsworthy.

The publications that employ me sometimes slants their content to appease their largest advertisers. As a blogger, advertisers come to me, because my content fits their product or service.

For journalists like me, having blogs balances things out in four ways:

1. When my EIC drops another story idea that I pitched, I no longer get upset. Because now I can talk about it at my blog and wouldn’t have to kiss tail to do it, and might make more pocket change in the process.

2. I don’t have to deal with a deadline. It gives me more time to fact check, collect more sources, and to write well.

3. I can cover what’s important to me and use my journalistic skills to create great content for my blog.

4. I don’t have to write very long to get good copy!

Now, there are literally millions of news sources available to everyone, and hundreds of MSM news sources available at all times, so if CBS wants to lean to the left and FOX to the right, who does it hurt? In a sense, this is actually a better way to get news, because each side lays out its best case and we the viewer – the jury – decide who is more convincing. Bloggers have biases, and (usually) admit to them; this makes them no less journalists. But the MSM should stop pretending it is unbiased.

I am really supprised that no one mentioned the fact that quite a few blogs are Editorial Comments.

Even some of the Tech Blogs give their opinion of how they think things could or should be done.

Just my $.02 worth

Joe

Bloggers are accountable. They are accountable to everyone that reads them, that participates. If a blogger posts an article that is total fiction (without declaring “Hey, this is a fictional story”) People will take them to task on inaccuracies. And trust me, with the blogosphere as large as it is, it wouldn’t take long for your credibility to sink into the sewer.

Does that mean we get fired for misprinting or misquoting? No, we don’t blog because we make money doing it, we blog because we have something to say, want to be heard, and ultimately sway opinions one way or the other.

It’s almost borg-like in the sense we are writing for a collective purpose, not just 1 dominate news source, or 1 corporate big-wigs ideal of what our news and information should be.

As for technology blogging, I love it, I think that sites such as Slashdot are great for an overall technology source, but you can see bias in their writing just as anywhere else.

Take the information you gleen from such sites with a grain of salt. When it does come to what to buy or what to do you’ll likely go to a geek you know in person for the facts.

(Unless you know they have a blog site and write about technology )

:)

are you kidding me? Most bloggers certainly have a leaning,but they also admit it. When idiots like Dan Rather pretend to be objective and then make stuff up in hopes of bringing down the opposite political party, it’s rediculous that you should think he’s no biased. FOX is definitely skewed right in their political shows, but in their actual news coverage they aren’t biased. The other mainstream networks are all rediculously left

The editors are their readers and accountability comes from other bloggers.

And Barbara does have a few valid points in her list supporting this.

Vic

Bloggers to me are part journalist / part columnist – in fact they could be seen as a hybrid of the two: many posts try to report an issue in a straight fashion and entwined within it is the biased commentary/opinion.