There's been a recent flare-up in BlogSpace regarding the
evergreen question of whether weblogging is or can be
journalism. I do try to avoid excess navel-gazing, but
there are so many otherwise smart people spinning their
wheels on the subject, that I feel like I have to weigh in
briefly.
The short version:
Don't confuse the tool with the result. Is blogging
journalism? It can be, if the people committing journalism
use weblogs.
Weblogs are tools. What people do with those tools is up to
them. Weblogs themselves are no more journalism than
compilers are programming or automobiles are commuting.
Tool. Function. Result. They're different. Why is that so
hard to understand?
One thing that we know weblogging isn't (except in a
vanishingly small number of cases) is a paying gig, which
leads to my next point.
There's been some foaming in the last couple of days about
the Pulitzers, which were announced yesterday. The question
has arisen: will Pulitzer-level journalism ever come out of
a weblog?
Sure. Why not? But first, the business case of weblogs has
to be established. Journalism costs money and time -- and
excellent, in-depth journalism takes lots of both. The
resources required to cover a state-wide wildfire, or a
major corporation covering up an unsafe workplace, or
events in a 40-year-old war half a world away, are more
than considerable.
You want this kind of journalism coming out of the world of
weblogs? Excellent. Figure out a way to make it pay for
journalists and the businessmen who support them, and only
then will you see serious, top-flight, finished-work
reportage.
Weblogs allow a different kind of storytelling than we've
seen before, just as radio and television tell stories
differently than newspapers. That's going to be exciting to
see happen. Asking whether weblogging is journalism is the
wrong question. The right question is asking how weblogging
can be used to tell news in a different and, (one hopes)
more informative way than ever before.