How blogs have changed journalism
Felix Salmon, in his Reuters blog, recounts his answers to a survey about the difference between old-style print journalism and the world of blogging:
“Benzinga’s Laura Hlebasko sent me some questions about blogs and online media for a feature she’s writing. Here they are, along with my answers:
“1) As an established journalist, what is the difference between you writing an article for traditional media and you writing an article for a blog? What do you like and dislike, or see as the benefits and limitations, of those mediums when you are reporting on a topic?
“I find pretty big differences in how I write, depending on whether it’s for a traditional media outlet or for the blog. I have a more conversational voice on the blog — I think of any given post as being part of a much broader conversation between bloggers and between me and my readers. Nearly all of my posts are reactions to something elsewhere online, and I try to be as generous as I can with links. I’m also not one of those bloggers who likes breaking news: often I’ll actually wait for the news to be broken elsewhere before weighing in with my view, since it can be dangerous to mix subjective opinions into the reporting of hard facts.
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“2) Most of the talk about blogging and its impact on traditional journalism has centered around declining readership and revenues for traditional print media, questionable credibility of blogs, etc., etc.,– what are some of the unseen, underreported, or not-yet-fully-realized impact of blog reporting vs. traditional journalism?
“The main impact I think is the way that blog reporting can iterate. In traditional media, you report the story and then you publish it; with blogs, you can start with something much less fully formed and then come back at it over time in many ways and from many angles. Every print journalist knows the feeling of publishing a story which is read by great sources who then provide lots of really good information which would have been great in the original piece. Bloggers don’t worry about that: they just put up a new post, or an update.
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4) How has Twitter impacted journalism?
… It’s massively increased the velocity of news: people now know what’s going on before it’s formally reported. It’s made it easier to find things you didn’t know you were interested in.”
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Read full posting here.
One thought on “How blogs have changed journalism”
Thanks Don. A good one!