Journalists vs Bloggers

-by Ann Marie

Jay Rosen's comments:

One of the biggest challenges for professional journalists today is that they have to live in a shared media space. They have to get used to bloggers and others with an independent voice talking about them, fact-checking them, overlooking them--and they no longer have exclusive title to the press. They have to share the press with the public …

Journalists have been slow to understand why they owe a debt to bloggers. They owe a debt because the people who are developing the web as a medium for journalism are bloggers and people like them. Those who are discovering its potential -– who are developing the tools and the protocols, who are pushing forward the ideas and the practices of web journalism – are not for the most part professional journalists. They are independent authors and bloggers and writers on the web.

Breaking it down:

Before the world wide web was around, journalists did not have to worry about sharing the media with the public. The only way for a person to be heard by the public was through the columinist section in the newspaper or if they called into talk shows. However, as the technology advanced I agree with Rosen when he says that journalists now have to share the media with the public. People have the right to create blogs in order to voice their opinion. I also think that many news medias use blogs to get the opinion of these bloggers and other people who do not normally blog.

As for journalists being in debt to bloggers. I think bloggers have given journalists some advancement in trying to tell newsworthy stories, but I do not think journalists are in debt to bloggers. As the world was moving towards the world wide web, journalists themselves had to make the decision on their own to move their material to the web. The world is changing and it is not all thanks to the bloggers, but thanks to the busy lives everyone has. People these days do not always have time to sit down and read a newspaper or listen to the television, but they have those brief minutes to quickly scan through the internet to see what is happening in the world. Bloggers have helped contribute a new form of story telling and journalists should thank them for it, but they did not contribute to all the pieces which make up web journalism.