Lasica, J.D. (2003) Blogs and Journalism Need Each Other (Nieman Reports, Fall 2003)

The appearance of “news blogs” simply can be treated as the growing number of information sources. Which field of news reporting is in a greatest need of depolarization of news sources?

The content of every news program is much dependent on the information offered my news agencies, especially if we speak of international issues coverage. For instance, “The Associated Press” says that “Depending on whether the story ran on the state, national or international wires, more than a billion people may read, hear or see news”. Researches show that in Lithuanian media main international information sources, especially those of images are Reuters, Interfax and AP, on the radio also BBC, CNN and some Russian on-line papers are quoted what means that news discourse actually depends on a few sources simply because of the high costs of information gathering. Blogging can be treated as at least a small escape from such domination of several international news sources.

Does blogging really change the main streams on news reporting?

What is biggest challenge for blogging that actually the category of trust in news business is so important that usually only “reliable and respected, well informed” sources are quoted and so far I could scarcely imagine the BBC news’host presenting facts with such the beginning: “as Christopher Allbriton writes in his weblog, ….”, and all news business is a huge inert structure. There are evident threats: first  for mass media structure itself, because it’s mainly built on “time checked” directions of networking, and with media concentration (not the growing variety of sources) they become even more stable sources of profit. Another logical threat is the responsibility for audience: to trust any news “with personality” seems less logical than to trust information from such big businesses as Reuters or AP which are really sensitive about their organizational face and reputation.

To sum up, “media mix” rewards from blogging but news reporting itself is effected by globalizing tendencies and is actually quite a conservative field of journalism. This means that it will take some time before weblogs  really effect traditional fields of journalism

Not only journalism is changed by blogging activities, but also the blogging culture changes because of journalism. Find an example.

“Scotblog” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/webguide/scotblog/) which is presented as  “the weblog of BBC Scotland Interactive, providing links to internet-based items and resources, featuring short executive summary and unique perspective on the web” is an example of highly institutionalized blog.

Not speaking much about the idea for BBC to have such blogs, the first visible fact that despite the “news with face” blog readers get quite formal information from reporter Mike (“Scotblog is presently written by a select group of BBC production staff, who are individually identified by their first name beneath each entry”), but you get neither his name nor opinion, though on air programs hosts usually present themselves with names ad surnames.

Comments are not posted under the news items, the reason is said to be “because of the BBC's standards on taste and decency, we cannot allow members of the public to publish their comments directly onto one of our sites, but all comments are immediately sent to a repository, where we proof them before publication. We check for comments regularly throughout the working day, and often at weekends too”.

So, the form of weblog is used more as a page with extended links for disseminating information from the same news businesses.

Gillmor, D. (2003) Moving Toward Participatory Journalism (Nieman Reports, Fall 2003)

Why blogging can be treated as distoringt journalism?

If you are a journalist dreaming of TV stars’ career to own a blog which reflects your individual voice is a perfect opportunity to express yourself and attract crowds of admirers. If blogging becomes a fashion, all journalists will be expected to have blogs and will be forced to be busy with quite redundant activities, simply take energy from journalists’ which could be used for working his direct job.

E.g. if you’re a radio reporter it takes you additional energy top supply your own blog with specially prepared information. Let’s imagine that to have a weblog for a journalist is as important as to drop in talk–shows for politicians. Ironically politics now is more about what is said than what is done. Like for a journalist to say “how I tried to make a good report”. Honest  entries to ones blog could be like this: “today I didn’t find 3 main sources to speak on mine topic but my editors said that my feature should be ready for evening program so I find 3 others, 1 of them knew less than me, another one was very exited about idea to speak on air and spoke so slowly that it took 1 hour to edit his speech later (because actually report could last no longer than 3 minutes…)  But anyway you heard this in the evening program and maybe even find this report very professional….

Of course I’m exaggerating. But what I want to say is that blogging technology  can be used in many ways, so it is not panacea against the “cloudiness” of journalism. There are the acts of journalism which won’t be made transparent by journalist’s themselves. Because of the same reason – everyone does mistakes and is not like to admit all of them.

P.S. Journalism studies is my major in Lithuania and I had been working as a reporter for a while. So, my arguments on previous text are influenced by my practical experience. Being a journalist in small country in not too sophisticated technological environment you know not only the contraints common with profession itself (eternal shortage of time, superficialness, dependance on sources etc.) but also reality: what is not seen as a direct source of profit by media bosses in the beginning, later are often simply attached to the traditional activities as an extention (e.g. neither of main Lithuanian dailies is improving their on-line versions of newspapers according to internet technology novelities). That's why I believe that in the nearest future blogging will be used as an extension of journalistic genres more often than treated as the new sort of journalism. 

btw, I hope to "extend" the radio program I'm planning to work in when I go back to Lithuania with blogging affordances :) However, I know that the target audience of this program is not the people who use computers and the scope of benefit will depend not only on my enthusiasm but on reality as well...