Saturday, July 17, 2004 7:38 PM
BY JON BEAUPRE
It’s a fact: nothing has shaken up the world of journalism so much since Mr. Guttenberg invented moveable type. Not Jayson Blair, not Stephen Glass, not Jack Kelley. Those guys were one-offs who will (hopefully) be object lessons for journos the world over. Blogging, however, could change the meaning of news and journalism forever.
(At this point, every contemporary article on the subject explains that ‘blog’ is short for ‘web-log’, a form of online interactive journal, but then you already knew that, right?)
The millions of blogs that have sprung up in recent months like California ballot initiatives suggest – horror of horrors – that you needn’t be a trained journalist to play in the great poker game of published ideas. You just need a computer, some blogging software, and the hubris to believe there might be people who want to read what you have to say. Columnist and Press Club member Cathy Seipp says blogging mostly serves as an online notebook for her, with ideas quickly jotted down that are later developed into stories. In this sense, blog-readers can often get a first glance at history in the making.
There are blogs on the sex lives of Washington insiders (Washingtonienne), blogs on inexpensive cooking (CheapCooking), a blog that features news told in haiku (Haikooties.com), blog aggregators about California poli- tics and other issues (rtumble.com) that pull together stories from different blogs, and not surprisingly, a blog on blogs (the weblog-blog). The most interesting blogs, however, are less subject driven and more a reflection of the personality of the blogger. Recent Press Club guest and active blogger Matt Welch wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, “with personality and an online audience … comes a kind of reader interaction far more intense and personal than any- thing comparable in print.” This relationship, Welch points out, is highly idiosyncratic and frequently more entertaining than conventional news sources.
It is also attracting millions of readers, giving conventional news sources a run for their money. The polling firm comScore Media Metrix reports that the Google-owned site BlogSpot.com – a blog portal – received 3.38 million unique visitors in March of this year – double last year ’s number – and estimates blog sites now account for 5-6% of Google’s overall traffic.
Many experts are concerned that the public will confuse this anarchic, overblown, opinionated buffet of words with journalism. Press Club board member and investigative reporter Michael Collins says “I don’t read blogs … because it’s akin to reading graffiti on a bathroom wall, granted that such graffi- ti is (often) amusing and unique.” The world of blogging is a lawless wild west of ideas, with little verification of fact, no pretense to objectivity, and scorn for conventional journalism.
Matt Welch points out that with thousands of engaged readers who share some of their idiosyncratic obsessions, journalist-bloggers are going to connect with people who have specialized knowledge about literally thousands of topics. He claims he has written dozens of articles that began as tips from readers of his blog MattWelch.com.
So while news media consolidate into fewer international behemoths, producing more trivial and superficial stories limited by tighter news budgets, blogs are providing a vast piñata of fact, opinion, rumor, innuendo and entertainment. They will also make conventional newsies irrelevant if they can’t synthesize what’s coming down the blog pipeline. Radio journalism veteran and Press Club board member Anthea Beckler Raymond says “there’s no overt point of view commentary stringing them together, but they are invaluable to journalists—certainly to editors.”
Most news analysts concede that blogs will not replace older news forms. But if they have any sense at all, they also realize that the democratization of the news biz via blogs could spell a new age for journalism. As one anonymous Press Club member wrote recently, “blogging is id … journalism is superego.”
Jon Beaupre can be reached at jon@lapressclub.org.
