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February 23, 2003

Blogging and Journalism

Jeff Walsh has an interesting essay about blogging and journalism (via GlennLogs, via Scripting News). I think I agree with him the most as far as the connection between the two. I've actually always seen it as a case of blogs CAN be journalism (Wi-Fi News), but they aren't necessarily.

Opinion columnists (and to some extent software reviewers) live in a different world. Their entire shtick is their take on things. It's why their photos appear above their columns, they are clearly building a brand. The photo is there, all of the copy is first person, and they have absolutely no interest in being objective. Fair, sure. But they clearly can say "Microsoft is off its rocker if it thinks any of its millions of Office users want this." No grunt can, at least not in their articles. Not unless they're quoting someone.

So, if there is any connection to be made, I think bloggers are the opinion columnists of the journalism world.

This seems like a much more interesting connection to me (Is writing opinion columns journalism? How is that viewed in the journalism world?). Of course the other issue with this is that everyone seems to have a slightly different definition of just what is a weblog. I go with the very general definition where everything from 'traditional' weblogs to more journal style sites are weblogs.

Posted by snooze at February 23, 2003 2:26 PM