Journalists and blogs
Yesterday we had a very interesting class, where three journalists came as guest speakers. They work at the Washington Post, CNN and The Hill. The discussion was mostly about approaching politicians and finding stories.
There was a question from a student asking about the use of technology to build stories. One of the journalists mentioned the use of blogs. He said journalists should be careful not to dismiss blogs.
He stated that not all blogs had thoughtful thinking, but there are some political blogs that are very useful for their daily coverage.
Although, he also said that having too much credibility for blogs is not very healthy. He concluded that it will take time for journalists to sit at their desks and read blogs as a source for information. He personally affirmed that he did read blogs but didn't get story ideas from them.
I just wanted to share this with you all because I think that it is interesting that even though journalists do not give much credibility to blogs, they still read them to know people's thinking on issues they report on.
3 Comments:
The concept of blogging and the use of blogs is still very much a novelty. There will always be a question of credibility no matter what type of source is used. Blogs if anything just serve at least to my way of thinking as an informal way to gather opinions and views and conclude that more than one person shares these views. In other words is allows for a sense of what are the people thinking now on issue a or b or the reaction of what person a or b did.
11:37 AM
I'd be hard pressed to find a legitimate, mainstream journalist that uses blogs to determine their news coverage or story topics. Any old battle ax in a newsroom would be hesitant to use such a source. Because of their novelty and because 90% of blogs are not real news, it makes blogging less atractive to the mainstream media. And perhaps the blogosphere exists because the mainstream media (for the most part) ignores them... But this could change as the MSM and media conglomerates start to embrace the new media as a way to reach a wider audience and pander their related products and services.
2:18 PM
Well I think that credibility in a very strong word. Anyway, credibility among american media has never been so low as now.
That's one of the reasons why blogs have become increasingly popular.
People mistrust jounalists and that's a fact.
Journalism is not confined to the Ivory Tower of the mediocracy.
90% percent of the news in mainstream media is not news any more. Just propaganda.
1:42 PM
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