My Brain on Blogs

This post by Eric Schonfeld on Techcrunch was too juicy to pass up: "Six Months In, And 600 Posts Later . . . The Worlds Of Blogging and Journalism Collide (In My Brain)". I have recently had the honor of being included in media events with newspaper journalists and have had the discussion of "blogger" versus "journalist" often. For my news and information sources, there will always be a place for newspapers and traditional media sources such as TV journalists. I would never call myself a journalist, I am a blogger and proud of it.

I do agree with the Techcrunch post that blogs are for immediacy and conversations where as I read/ watch traditional news sources for facts and "professional" opinions. Professional journalists have access to whole departments for "fact checking" and spend larges amounts of time on research (even if it is not always a perfect process). While some bloggers are both because they are professionals with access to research, I enjoy reading blogs for the straight, honest, unfact checked opinions...

I also agree that blogging demands can mean hours spent daily and many late nights, because those blogs without fresh posts cease to exist.... I hope that the new trend of including bloggers with media for events will continue, that way readers can get the best of both worlds - even when they collide.

Link to Techmeme discussion here.

Read the Momocrats posts from the California Democratic State Convention as a good example of the value add of bloggers at mainstream events.

Comments

[Vered]

I agree. One of the first things I did when I started my blog, was to add a "legal" page that establishes, among other things, that the blog is basically thoughts, ideas and gossip rather than facts. Having said that, blogs tend to be so much juicier than fact-checked news, that these days I often prefer to read blogs. :)

[Greg Wu]

I always wondered about celebrity journalists who have their own blogs. Can they really let loose in their own personal blogs? What if they say something extremely controversial or outright unfactual, wouldn't that damage the reputation of their news organization? but can a news organization hold them accountable for saying something in their own blog that's totally separate from work?

For example, can 60 Minutes Leslie Stahl blog about whatever she wants? or do the execs at CBS have some restrictions on what she can or cannot say.

I notice her blogs usually stick to snippets of her interviews...
http://www.wowowow.com/post/pollster-dotty-lynch-presidential-race-right-now-is-it-slipping-away-from-sen-clinton