Are bloggers the enemy?
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
There are about 112 million blogs floating around the internet, according to blog tracker Technorati. And while a significant number of those blogs are run by established media organizations, there are plenty of journalists who are alarmed by anyone other than a credentialed journalist reporting the news.
I was recently watching a rerun of The Colbert Report when I saw author Andrew Keen touting his book The Cult of the Amateur. "Oh cool, a book about the internet," I thought. That is until he said: "The internet trivializes culture to such an extent that everyone is broadcasting, everyone is writing blogs, everyone is putting music on the web."
"But isn't that the point of the internet (and citizen journalism)," I thought?
Keen continued: "I think we need objective professional journalists who responsibly collect the news rather than anonymous bloggers who are often in pay of corporations and foreign governments. That's the crisis of this media."
It not only didn't make sense, it was a very elitist viewpoint. To dismiss the millions of people who write daily about issues they are passionate about as subpar journalism is to miss out on a wealth of resources. I'm not saying that everything written on a blog should be taken as golden, but I do admire the considerable amount of well-reported journalism that exists on the internet.
The crisis of this media is not bloggers. It's adhering to old methods of journalism, uninventive reporting... and not reading 10,000 words, of course.
I was recently watching a rerun of The Colbert Report when I saw author Andrew Keen touting his book The Cult of the Amateur. "Oh cool, a book about the internet," I thought. That is until he said: "The internet trivializes culture to such an extent that everyone is broadcasting, everyone is writing blogs, everyone is putting music on the web."
"But isn't that the point of the internet (and citizen journalism)," I thought?
Keen continued: "I think we need objective professional journalists who responsibly collect the news rather than anonymous bloggers who are often in pay of corporations and foreign governments. That's the crisis of this media."
It not only didn't make sense, it was a very elitist viewpoint. To dismiss the millions of people who write daily about issues they are passionate about as subpar journalism is to miss out on a wealth of resources. I'm not saying that everything written on a blog should be taken as golden, but I do admire the considerable amount of well-reported journalism that exists on the internet.
The crisis of this media is not bloggers. It's adhering to old methods of journalism, uninventive reporting... and not reading 10,000 words, of course.
Labels: news on the news
