Blogs and Journalism

By Gunnar Berglund
Posted Wednesday, January 12, 2005

The world has seen the emergence of a new style of journalism, based on a 'raw feed' directly from the source. And the common notion that surrounds the emergence of serving 'raw feed' is that the journalists testing the new waters are bound to wreak havoc on institutionalized media. Also a popular notion is that Weblogs changes the nature of 'news' is in the migration of information from the personal to the public.

Unquestionable, a blog is a medium that gives maximum exposure to one's creativity. Just by hitting the 'post' button and any personal writing becomes published writing.

Weblogging is driving a powerful new form of amateur journalism. Today, millions of Net users - young people especially - have taken up the role of columnist, reporter, analyst and publisher while fashioning their own personal broadcasting networks.

For the inexperienced, a blog consists of a running commentary with pointers to other sites. Some, like Librarian.net, Jim Romenesko's Media News or Steve Outing's E-Media Tidbits, cover entire industries by providing quick bursts of news with links to full stories.

Journalism and blogging together is becoming popular day by day, more than any other form of blogging. Following reasons are considered to extensively contribute to its increasing popularity:

Creative Freedom

Part of a blog's allure is its unmediated quality. For a journalist, there's no luxury like the luxury of publishing unedited essay. The freedom in being able to present yourself precisely as you want to is of enormous joy. It does not matter how sloppily, irrationally or erratically the content is written. The idea is to publish what you think in the way you think.

Instantaneity

To a few writers, even writing for a weekly magazine may seem like taking ages to print. With a Weblog, you hit the send key and it is out.

Interactivity

It is a kick to receive feedback from people who have taken interest to read and criticize your work. These are the people you have never heard of; who stumble on your Weblog and become a part of your thinking process.

Lack Of Marketing Constraints

When blogging it is not necessarily to tailor a work piece for a certain readership or demographic. People interested in a perspective finds its author - the blogger, instead of the blogger finding a publication that reflects people's interests.

Most of the time, the Weblogs tend to be less about actual reporting and more about analysis and punditry and opinionated commentary. The 9/11 terrorist attacks fuelled the public's appetite for information, analysis and news, if only to make sense of the tragedy. Bloggers rose to prominence by feeding this desire.

Blogging has taken off in remarkable fashion; in a way, it has made good where newsgroups have failed. It has kept the promise that the Internet would provide real community to Web surfers. Tuning in to some of the newsgroups devoted to the terror attacks; one may sometimes feel to be in the middle of a verbal war zone with so much noise passing for informed discussion.

Weblogs run from single person operation to large teams and communities, to business organizations spread throughout the world. They offer a great way for readers to find constantly updated news and information. It also allows authors to connect to thousands of readers in a personal way and add the honest, unedited voice of thousands to increasingly commercializing Web.

The plethora of tools that helps managing the weblog capitalizes on the ease of publishing posts to even greater extent.

These are probably the reasons why they have been widely adopted and maintained - for several years in some cases.

About the Author
Gunnar Berglund
gb@meonit.com
(http://gazette.meonit.com)
Gunnar Berglund has been a "internet- hardworker" for the last four years He publishes The meonit Gazette (http://gazette.meonit.com) and also runs (http://www.emarketingprofit.com)