Blogging reshapes journalism and journalists

Journalists discover blogging’s power

Two journalists turned bloggers have posted perspectives on the power of blogs. Both are recent blogging converts. Both have worthwhile observations.

In why journalists must learn the values of the blogging revolution, The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade argues that in the past journalists were secular priests pontificating to the great unwashed. He says news was one-way traffic. Blogging, with its built-in feedback mechanisms, has turned that on its head.

Feedback reshapes the news relationship

That may be true of a major national newspaper in the UK, but here in New Zealand there's a long tradition of negative feedback when readers don't like what they see in their newspapers.

The difference with blogging and online news is that the feedback isn't always negative. Sometimes it can be positive. This is strange and unusual, even unsettling, to those of us who come from a journalist tradition where positive feedback is rare.

Future of journalism beyond hub and spoke

Greenslade goes on to write:

“I have tended to predict that future news organisations will consist of a small hub of “professional journalists” at the centre with bloggers (aka amateur journalists/citizen journalists) on the periphery.

In other words, us pros will still run the show.

I’m altogether less certain about that model now. First, I wonder whether us pros are as valuable as we think. Second, and more fundamentally, I wonder whether a “news organisation” is as perfect a model as we might think.”

Greenslade’s conclusion would be concerning for journalists if they agreed with his hub and periphery prediction.

Integration between reporters and readers

A more promising vision of the future of journalism is that it may work more like a sports league with professionals operating on one level, semi-professionals working at another and the amateurs elsewhere.

And, as with the English FA Cup, there’s always potential for the occasional upset as the smaller players outplay those at the top of the league.

Towards the end of his piece Greenslade writes:

When we journalists talk about integration we generally mean, integrating print and online activities. But the true integration comes online itself. The integration between journalists and citizens. Of course, there should be no distinction between them. But journalists still wish to see themselves as a class apart.

That's one view of the relationship between journalists and readers. Another is to understand that readers are, in effect, the journalists' employers.

Bernard Hickey’s blogging journey

New Zealand blogger Bernard Hickey writes that he feels liberated as a blogger. He likes the speed of the medium, the feedback and the ability to connect to his audience. As Hickey says, he is now a blogging evangelist.

Hickey’s blog is interesting because it serves an audience that is relatively ignored in New Zealand. For want of a better label his target is middle class, aspirational and liberal in the British sense of free thinking and open minded, not the American sense of being politically centre left.

This post was originally written in the present tense but has been updated to reflect that it is now an historic record of how things looked in 2008.