Dave Winer talks with News.com today about early blogs, his move to Harvard for a fellowship there (only 10 blogs at Harvard? that can’t include the student body, can it?), and how blogging is supplanting some of the roles traditionally performed by mainstream journalists.
It’s a worthwhile read, of course, since Dave is one of the few bloggers who’s a big thinker, a doer instead of just a pontificator, and a dang good writer.
Dave and I have had runarounds on the subject of journalism’s role in the new media ecosystem, and it’s clear that he’s felt burned by a lot of press coverage in the past and that colors his perspective. (Just as the fact that I’ve worked in newsrooms for 20 years colors mine.)
So when Dave says …
People now get the information from each other and for each other using Web logs. There are still professional journalists writing, but a lot less. Web logs are journalism. Have they had a big impact? Absolutely. When a big story hits, I don’t necessarily trust the professional journalists to tell me what’s going on. If I can get the Web logs from the people who were actually involved, I’ll take that.
… I’ll have to disagree … and agree.
I agree that weblogs have changed the dynamic and balance of power in the media ecosystem. We’re no longer passive recipients of fact and entertainment dished out by the establishment media. We’re creators, producers, designers, publishers. Most bloggers have something worthwhile to say, and they find a ready audience for their niche or wide-ranging subject matter.
Too many newsrooms still share the caveman mindset that blogging is at best a lower form of journalism or that it’s not journalism at all. It’s a convenient stance, given the dire state of the news industry, but it’s flat-out wrong.
At the same time, I think bloggers can be a little too self-satisfied and dismissive of the mainstream news media. In truth, it’s a symbiotic relationship. As I’ve written about before, weblogs will supplement and complement, but not replace or displace, traditional media. When big news hits — when war breaks out, a terrorism attack occurs, or even a neighborhood shooting — you can bet the overwhelming majority of online readers will first turn to news media like CNN.com, MSNBC, nytimes.com, a local news site and other traditional sources — and then turn to weblogs for discussion, dissection, interpretation, counter-arguments.
Weblogs need the traditional media, if only to play off against. In the years ahead, I think we’ll see a richer interaction between the best parts of weblogging and the best parts of traditional news operations. It’s been slow in coming, but the evidence is growing by the day that their futures are intertwined.
Despite their warts and all-too-evident shortcomings, newspaper and broadcast journalists still play an essential role in this democracy trying to keep us informed. That’s what real journalism aims to do, regardless of the medium or the messenger.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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