Rich Miller has some rather interesting observations and predictions about blogging. The most interesting being that he believes bloggers will start to develop their own sources and begin to provide more and more original news content.
I suspect he's right about that. Indeed, original content and stories do already appear on blogs--a few have appeared here on Dean's World, and there will be more in the future.
But I think many people make a mistake when they dismiss bloggers today as simply providing "punditry." Bloggers today are already providing services that go beyond bland predictions and repetitive, echo-chamber analysis. Although there's a lot of that, good bloggers are also synthesists. That is, they may not always create original news content, but they are often able to take news content from a variety of sources, fact-check it with lightning speed, cross-reference it with other known data, and provide corrections. Bloggers often know things the traditional news reporters did not know, and are able to provide references to things the reporters missed.
In short, bloggers are the ultimate "media watchdogs." They often provide valuable content by synthesizing data from a variety of sources. I prize this as the very best thing about the weblogging phenomenon--so far anyway. It's probably the most underrated aspect of the medium.
I couldn't agree with you more. I feel that as dedicated bloggers, it's our duty to watch the media and report on the reporting so to speak. I have friends who visit my blog and read articles that they never would have read if it weren't for me. I get some weird satisfaction of knowing that people are looking to me to provide up to date infomration on the day's news and provide color commentary as well.
This was the main point that I alluded to a couple of days ago in the first comment about the unmasking of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, queen of the ellipsis-based political lie.
Ever since you people introduced me to blogworld and its numerous provinces, I have begun perceiving that the bloggers play much the same role the the feisty and independent small-town journalists and editors played in the traditional America before the major broadcast networks and other media manipulators assumed their role dictating what the rest of us were supposed to read, think and respond to.
Stay on the blog, and the truth shall keep everyone free.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Bloggers are more than watchdogs;
they are quite simply a total fresh
"restart" on journalism. Newspapers
of the 1700's in England, and the 1800's
in Western America, were very much like
blogs. (Adjusted for technology, of
course.)
Being of an historical bent by nature, it is my wont to check and double-check information that I hear before I fully digest it, and send it to the "Fact" file in my brain. As evinced by some of the journalistic scandals of recent weeks, we may have just as much chance of getting factual reporting from blogs as from traditional print media. The statement, "I read it in the Times," just doesn't have the power it once used to.
These days, I find myself discussing individual blogs at home with my husband, as well as with people who are non-blog-oriented, much more than I do traditional media. "Glenn Reynolds had a thing today on Jayson Blair...." or, to my mother or another "non-initiate", "This guy Dean Esmay has this blog, and he linked an article today about...whatever, etc.".
Obviously, the mainstream media will always have major advantages of mass and capital over potential news sources, like blogs. However, the blogging community has the advantage of numbers and time over media giants. Naturally, we (bloggers) fall into place as a sort of filter, or watchdog if you will, of news content and reporting.
Moreover, I don't see blogging as a short-term, flash-in-the-pan internet "craze". I think blogging is here to stay, carving out a permanent niche for itself in the flow of information from person to person. I see bloggers and blogging as almost equivalent to, say, talk radio hosts and their shows. There are just a lot more of us to choose from!
It turns out that I have a happy talent for doing interviews, of all things. Who knew? Anyway as the semester ended I became an award winning journalist. I’ve since wondered what the hell to do with this skill; I am no longer in the journalism business. Then it hit me: I could just interview people for my site. I mean do honest to the gods news reporting, talk to people, report what they say, cooperate their information; all the stuff that I was trained on to do as a journalist. Of course, I convincing people to be interviewed for a weblog might be a touch difficult...
It's not as hard as you might think, Andrew. Most people are flattered when you ask for an interview.
You did that great interview we published here on DW at the start of the war. I still remember it, you did an awfully nice job of it. I, on the other hand, did that Chris Muir interview, which a lot of people liked. I have another interview with another personality coming up soon.
And it looks like Arnold Harris may have snagged a phenomenally cool interview we'll be publishing here in the next few weeks.
Am I teasing upcoming content and being intentionally vague with details? Why, perish the thought, I'd never do such a thing....
The only person I’ve ever really had to work for an interview with was a woman running for congress. Boy did she not take me seriously. She even flinched when I pulled out my notepad. That may not be _why_ she lost, but it was indicative of it...
The thing is, though, that every one of the dozen or so interviews I’ve done have been for traditional media. Granted, The stuff I’ve blogged has reached a far wider audience (and thanks for that reprint back during the war), but the interviewee always knew that I was legit because he could see the paper itself, we could be tracked down...
What the hell, though? If someone doesn’t push the envelope, It’ll never get pushed. Once I get the new site up and running, I’ll see if I can interview a co-worker; he detonated the first H-bomb...
BTW: your Chris Muir interview was nice. Transcript interviews (a la playboy’s 20 questions) are not my favorite to write, but you showed the knack for asking the right questions. I hope you do more in the future...
And here is a link to my favorite of Mr. Muir’s work...
You want to see it in action check out CalPundit. He did some hard research on the Guardian story about Wofowitz's statement that appears to have been misquoted.
Dean,
I think this is right, at least apples-to-apples. There are a lot of lousy blogs out there, run by people who don't know much about what they're talking about; but that's true of small-time newspapers as well. And, with maybe a few exceptions, those bloggers have very little readership.
While I reference the major media outlets on a regular basis and wouldn't want to do without their service, the sheer number of incredibly bright people in the blogosphere, many with amazing amounts of professional expertise, who are providing this free service is just astounding. As a class, the better bloggers strike me as more knowledgeable than the top journalists.
Not only that Dean, but just the simple fact that bloggers now have an outlet to become a grassroots that may have some of the dangers of false information, but I think that is eventually weeded out as we all come to know who is reliable and who is not. There are some of us (like me!) who have never been journalists, aren't journalists now, even with all the plugin ability of reading online info, and shan't be in the future because the connections and expertise hasnt been cultivated.
HOWEVER, I personally see myself as a watchdog in the flavor that somewhere SOMEONE in the flyover wilds that haunt media arrogance IS keeping tabs on who says what and why and when, and voicing THEIR opinion of it WITHOUT the preferred 'Filter' of an Editor who decides which feedback letter gets printed this week. My response is NOW, and ACCESSIBLE and disseminated amongst those who agree and/or disagree with me.
THAT is what the mainstream media hate about bloggers. THAT is what they mean by unaccountability. We are outside The Guild.
And they don't like it. Not one bit.
It's why I always say : I have watched, I have recorded, I will teach...and there is NOTHING they can do about it.