To Blog or Not to Blog: Understanding Blogs as an Aspiring Journalist

Retrieved from "Gabriel Weinberg's Blog: Startups and Stuff." August 29, 2011

In the last post about the greatest things on the Internet I mentioned how social media, multisourcing and information sharing "allow us to live and participate more actively in the growing global community."

Whether one considers blogs part of social media, as a new form of journalism or just an online journal or portfolio, they have undeniably come to shape the way humans communicate and produce content for mass publication, “linking” people and groups together and creating spontaneous forums across borders.

Blogs have democratized writing and, some dare to say, journalism, in the sense that every person with a computer and Internet access automatically becomes a reader, a critic and a potential writer, editor and publisher.

This, many believe, results problematic.

Not only is indiscriminate publishing dangerous because not all types of content should be widely available for the world to see, but also because—as many pundits across platforms have consistently denounced— blogs have the potential to deviate attention from formal, organized, regulated journalism to seemingly more frivolous portals of mostly opinion sharing.

However, we should analyze things more slowly before making such a far-reaching argument.  Only then will we come to see that neither are blogs displacing journalism nor are the two so incompatible that they cannot coexist in today’s world.

Why?

Mostly because blogs and journalistic articles serve different purposes, in most cases, and because some of the differences pundits cite between the two often become similarities.

Andrew Sullivan, in his article “Why I blog,” published by The Atlantic magazine in 2008, embarks in the task of telling the history of blogging and how it functions, irremediably establishing a comparison with journalism.

Problematically, although Sullivan starts off trying to reconcile the two, he ends up overestimating the blog’s capacity to engage in a personal conversation with readers while at the same time oversimplifying the blog’s content when compared with their print homologues.

In many stances when talking about the complexity of content, the production process, the effort and responsibilities involved, Sullivan leans toward saying that blogging is less complex and journalism is more exclusive, deviating from his initial premise—that they are not antagonists but complementary.

Although effective in making distinctions between blogs and articles, Sullivan fails in providing characteristics of blogs that do not at the same time apply to journalistic pieces.

As a journalism student and an avid reader of the press I find hard to believe that organized journalism does not “air a variety of thoughts or facts on any subject in no particular order other than that dictated by the passing of time," as Sullivan implies when describing blogs, and that journalists are incapable of engaging in a conversation with their audience, as Sullivan seems to emphasize when he ponders that "a sort of conversation often develops between the blog’s readers and its author(s)."

Granted, there are many stages to go through that make journalism and publishing in an organized medium a more complicated process, but journalism can be as spontaneous as blogging, after all, it is precisely the events that happen as time passes what dictate the front pages and overall content of newspapers globally. 

In the decision and editing process, even in straight-news, objective, balanced stories, journalists give away their personalities and biases through the word choices they make, the phrasing they use and the overall theme of the story. These themes and approaches spark the conversations Sullivan believes are exclusive to bloggers. If this were not the case, accusations of "journalistic" or "media bias" would probably rarely be in the public's mind, even less in its growing weariness for journalists.

In sum,

Will journalism end because of blogging? No. 

Will blogging displace journalism? If ever, probably not for a very long time.

Can the two coexist as homologous is the interconnecting, globalizing world? Yes! They must, mainly because they cater to different needs.

As with what is the future of journalism and blogging we will just have to wait and see how they converge and absorb (or are absorbed by) the different social media channels that have come to dominate the world online.

  

Esther Daniela Castillejo

References:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/why-i-blog/307060/?single_page=true

The Greatest Thing I Ever Saw On The Internet

Attempting to discern what is the greatest thing we ever saw on the Internet has the potential to be one of the main challenges of our generation.

The challenge lies not only in the millions of options to choose from, but also in the constancy and rapidness with which Internet users around the globe upload new content that, almost in a matter of minutes, outshadows what we once thought was the greatest thing ever seen online.

For many the greatest thing on the Internet is a funny video, an interesting blog, a comprehensive website or useful program. Some would even take a holistic approach and say that the greatness of something online lies not only in the thing itself, but also on how it made you feel at the moment and the purpose it served when first encountered.

For me the greatest thing on the Internet is the Internet itself and its capacity to compress time and space in today's globalizing world.

Social networking, information sharing, multisourcing are all phenomenons of our time that allow us to live and participate more actively in the growing global community. And the ability to do that is incredibly exciting.

That said, the greatest thing I ever saw on the Internet was the stream of World Youth Day Madrid 2011, precisely because it allowed all of us who participated in the event to experiment again the vibrant, ecstatic moments we lived as a global community gathered for one common belief. If we include those who did not participate, having the stream online  connected millions of people worldwide under the same--network, and that, even by today's demanding standards, is mind-blowing.

Whether we praise or demonize the Internet for its capacities and effects in today's society, whether we like the infinite options the Internet offers us, its ability to produce such powerful moments and circumstances--be it by making us laugh, cry, scream, collaborate with others or share what we know--makes it all the more exciting to live in the XXI century.

Esther Daniela Castillejo