Outside the Beltway

Bloggers as Journalists

James Joyner · Thursday, April 15, 2004 · 5 comments

Doc Searls and Jeff Jarvis call on bloggers to do some actual reporting. Doc’s premise is intriguing:

So here’s a controlled study. Look up Air America on Google, Google News, Yahoo, Yahoo News and any other search engine you like. Then look it up on Technorati.

What you see on Technorati is a lot closer to live for the simple reason that the searches are activated by RSS notifications. And, unlike Google and Yahoo news, blogs are not excluded. By virtue of RSS and its relatives, blogs are purposefully included.

So, as long as blogs remain illegitimate as sources of News to Google and Yahoo, the window is open for proving those engines wrong by doing some of their work for them. What work? Well, fisking what the major media say is a fine blog tradition, but deconstruction isn’t enough. We need construction too. Do we care about a subject enough to report on it, and not just to opine about it? Then maybe we should do the digging too.

Jeff adds,

Now there are a few speed bumps on the way to a blogger Pulitzer.
First is the matter of time and resources: Unless paid, most of us don’t have the the time or inclination to spend time reporting a story. But many would.
Second is the issue of access; when you call many a source and they ask where you’re from and you say JustMyBlog.com, you may not get far. But I think that will change as sources (and flacks) realize this is a new way to get their stories told around the press. And I’m waiting for the first case of a blogger fighting to get press credentials for some official event; they publish and have a public like any other news media and should win that fight. Third, there’s the question of inclination. I think many bloggers assume they’re just not reporters. But reporting is nothing more than asking a question and reporting the answers. There’s no reason any of us could not go off seeking those answers.

I’ve spent a month harping on Howard Stern and the First Amendment but it wasn’t until a magazine assigned me to write a print story about it that I contacted a few experts (including fellow bloggers) and the FCC to get answers to questions. At least one commenter challenged me to do it before the assignment. I probably should have taken up the challenge; it would have made for a better argument and a better blog.

There’s a middle ground between doing no independent research and being a full-time journalist for no pay: covering things within your own areas of expertise and geography.

With the sometimes exceptions of beat reporters from the truly big media outlets, most professional journalists write mainly about things about which they have virtually no knowledge. Several, if not most, of the more prominent bloggers made their name writing about something they do or have done professionally–law, military affairs, politics, the mass media, the high tech world, etc. Nor does it have to be about one’s profession. There are humor blogs and other niches. Meryl Yourish has carved out a niche on all things Jewish. They exploit their networks and read materials that the general public –and, indeed, most reporters–don’t and then provide a useful synthesis.

Now, granted, most blogging is op-ed writing rather than reporting. But, then, most journalists just report until they can land a gig as an opinion journalist–preferably on television–anyway.