Will blogging rule the world?
April 15th 2009 04:34
the future of journalism - big call! although maybe thats what people are crying out for, more conversational, interactive news . . . something that a telecaster in a box cant provide maybe thats what people are crying out for, more conversational, interactive news. something that a telecaster in a box cant provide
Morgan Bell wrote the above comment in response to a quote on an earlier Bloggercises post by Mary Jo Foley, the widely known and read author of the All About Microsoft blog. Foley said, "For me, the future of journalism is blogging."
Morgan makes a good point, and we have only to look at the online versions of the major newspapers, where every news story has a box under it inviting comments, to see the trend.
As Morgan also said, Foley's statement is a big call. However, if blogging can be the future of publishing, and I think there's a strong argument that it can, then why can't it be the future of journalism? The Huffington Post was the most-read blog in the world during the US election campaign. It provided pure journalism and it was read by numbers which would leave some daily newspapers green with envy.
I think it's easy, in judging the present and the future of blogging, to think in terms of the millions of ordinary blogs rather than in terms of the thousands of extraordinary blogs.
Another thing which needs to be appreciated in judging the power and the future of blogging is the rapidly growing presence of blogging in the corporate world. Billions of dollars are spent every year on marketing, and blogging is the shooting star in the marketing firmament. When one appreciates that a blog can achieve everything that public relations can achieve, only better and with more accurate feedback, and that a blog can achieve everything that advertising can achieve, except much, much, much more cheaply, then things appear in a different perspective. (For those interested, read more on corporate blogging at Salient Point.)
Back in the publishing arena, consider this: newspapers are declining and blogging is growing. Every day, fewer people are making a living in newspapers, and more people are making a living from blogging. Will blogging ever catch up? I see no reason why not.
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Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
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Murdoch's gutter rag will rule. Forget about blogging. It's for people who can't get jobs as journos.
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Comment by Morgan Bell
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i think you are right about the thousands of extraordinary blogs, as opposed to the millions of ordinary ones, and the more professional and newsworthy ones will slowly replace or suplement print news
i notice most of the major publications post articles online on their websites and allow readers to leave comments, much in the style of a blog, and articles are getting shorter ("screen-sized" if you will), much in the style of a blog
i think its a format people are comfortable with, and with embedded links they can easily access further reference material
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Rather than tell you I want your karma I'll suck up to you?
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Another good point - blogging may not replace newspapers so much as simply merge with them.
It occurs to me that, in the world of newspapers, it is the good ones that are visible, while in the world of blogging we are more local community (such as Orble) oriented. We've all heard of The New York Times, but how many have heard of the Huffington Post?
Of course, this may change as the big blogs mature.
Comment by SpikeTheLobster
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As for the trend in news sites offering comments, I remain a cynic. They don't actually want or care about discussion - they simply follow the trend and provide the ability because otherwise people won't visit. The illusion of being able to discuss is a very powerful tool. That's why 'true' blogging has its place, and it's an important one - how many BBC news discussions have a reply from the BBC? I'll bet it's... none. How many Huffington posts (no pun intended) have one? I'll bet it's a lot more.
Comment by Mrs M
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Writing to web and writing for hardcopy publications are two very different things.
Newspaper sales are declining and the number of newspapers are declining but I still can't read every story that printed in the newspaper, online.
And there is still something about reading a physical newspaper. Much like reading a book. Which is why books have yet to go out of business.
Mia Freedman wrote an article last week stating that the majority of bloggers in the world are women. We once had 'newspaper men' and now we can have 'blogging women'.
It's interesting to watch it all unfold.
Love & stuff
Mrs M
Comment by Chris Champion
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It certainly is interesting to watch it all unfold. I think the growth of blogging has already surprised a few people, and will in all likelihood surprise a few more yet.
Your journo friends are right when they say there is no money in blogging for a newspaper, but did newspapers ever actually expect to make money from blogging? Newspapers are blogging because people are reading blogs.
Good newspaper writers, however, can make money from blogging. That's what happened at The Huffington Post.
I am, by the way, a newspaperman myself - 23 years in fact. I am now involved in corporate blogging services, and there certainly is money in that. I can see the benefit of my journalistic background in creating the unique, value-added, informative, issues-driven content which makes a good corporate blog, and I can see just what Mary Jo Foley meant when she said the future of journalism is blogging.
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Lots of informative and witty comments on this one as always.
Everyone should remember that even Rupert Murdoch himself conceded a few years back that he had underestimated the growth and power of interactive internet.
I often go to the newspapers first for research and content but I also view what other writers (not official journalists) have to say about things too. Just because someone has a career title as a "journalist" does not necessarily give them an unquestioned authority on any particular subject. Some are excellent. Others are just trotting out stuff their bosses want them to write or worse, someone who may possibly be a future employer wants them to write.
There are something like 200 million blogs in the world and a lot are crappy but some of them are good, even excellent at times.
Journalism is good and bad too and as you say Chris, journos become bloggers too - often very successful ones.
Comment by Chris Champion
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It is interesting that the Oxford Concise Dictionary's definition of journalist is someone employed to write, edit or report for a newspaper, journal or newscast. Newscast, in turn, is defined as a radio or television broadcast of news reports.
Not surprisingly, neither blog nor weblog make it. Neither does world wide web, or just web in the sense of www. Internet makes it - well, it's a start.
All of which supports what we already know - there is some major rethinking to do in the way we define things, because we are doing things differently.
I don't know if that's particularly relevant, but it's interesting
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Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
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I'm not saying bloggers aren't better writers than journalists. A lot of them are.
I'm just saying that the movers-and-shakers of this world will always control it.
I mean look at the facts. How long have most people been on Orble blogging? None of them have made anything like a wage out of the exercise.
But then they get on posts like this and say the future of the journalistic world rests on blogging?
And bloggers agree with them??? Hello? Wake up people!
That really needs some serious thought.
Fuck there are some deluded people out in blog land.
Pipe dreams, man. Pipe dreams.
The reality is this. If blogging ever does become a paid job? Guess who will be blogging? All the journos out of a job. And guess what? They'll get the job over an Orble blogger because they have a CV in the real world.
I mean take it or leave it man. I'm just speaking my mind. If you don't like it, I can't help that. I'm just giving you a bit of perspective. Or maybe a different perspective.
Apparently bloggers are so sensitive to everything written about them, they can't distinguish between what is a comment designed to make people think and an attack. That's what I see on here. Wanna be writers who dream of making it big time in the blogging world.
And then thumbing their noses at the establishment. Fuck that's so old-hat human nature. That's been going on in everyone's mind for centuries.
If bloggers took some time out and thought about the reality of blogging, a lot of them would agree with me.
I'll keep blogging because I like it. I know I upset people. But I don't sit there and go, I'm going to upset this or that person. I just go, I'll say what I think about the matter. It will upset some and please others.
And that's the human condition. Amen & Alleluia to madmen and monks!
Comment by Cibbuano
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What separates blogging from the serious papers, then? Quality? Certainly, there are quality blogs out there, swamped by the mediocre, but they exist.
Plus, newspapers are wretched in their own way, from misreporting news to plagiarism scandals...
Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
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What separates bloggers from journos is the wage man.
Wake up!
Comment by samaritan
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I don't, however, get the same feel from a newspaper. I get my news from the internet, whether the online newspapers or videos from ABC news. But I can imagine that a lot of people do like the feel of a newspaper.
I think it's hard to know where technology will take us. They said books would die and they didn't. However, they also said that letter writing would die and - at least as far as I can see, it practically has. Even my aunt who vowed never to go on the internet because she preferred sending 'real letters' as opposed to emails has finally given in.
But I don't think newspapers will ever be replaced by blogs. I think perhaps more and more newspapers will branch into blogs, but not as a replacement. I think when it comes to news, things don't get replaced just added to. Once upon a time, there was only the newspaper. Then radio came along, but newspapers survived. Then TV came along, but newspapers survived. Then the internet came along, and newspapers will still survive. It's just that now instead of having just a newspaper, news outlets have all these others things on top of it.
Samaritan
Comment by Chris Champion
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I still have close friends in newspapers, and they would agree with your word wretched - although in their case they'd be describing what it's like working for newspapers these days. I still love reading good newspapers, but the cultural spirit of print journalism is largely gone.
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I'm with you on books - I have thousands and they dominate my home. May books live forever.
I'm also with you that blogs will not take over as the principal form of news presentation. Blogs as we know them, that is.
Radio and to some extent television took over from newspapers as the primary news source because they could offer immediacy. What they couldn't offer as well was news-related content, and so the newspapers survived - delayed news delivery but great for analysis and feature backgrounders.
Both newspapers and radio/TV, however, are limited in reader/viewer engagement.
A web site featuring breaking news, blogs and forums can be better than print and electronic media in terms of all three critical elements: immediacy, content and audience engagement.
The Huffington Post site now looks and acts like a newspaper, supported by blogs written by journalists and politicians and celebrities and you name it, and some of them boasting readerships in the hundreds of thousands. The New York Times, I notice, advertises on the site.
I think it's a glimpse of the future. I can't see any reason why this concept won't grow and mature and become our principal way of receiving news and news-related content.
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People like to think they have a voice, they want to be involved, maybe that's another reason why blogging is so popular. And as far as women being prolific bloggers, I think it's great. For a long time women could not be heard, no one wanted to listen, but thier opinions and points of view finally have an audience. Many like me have no intentions of becoming writers, we just like to write, it's as simple as that,
Comment by Chris Champion
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Not only are women prolific bloggers but I read recently that the single fastest growing blog category is young mothers writing about parenthood.
No problems about equal opportunity when it comes to blogging
Comment by Lilla
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I also found this post and its comments interesting, perhaps because I do have a degree in journalism, (a Masters degree at that) . . and because I have run an independant regional newspaper for seven years; a newspaper I started myself because I was so dissolutioned by the way the Murdoch empire was delivering its opinion pieces . . and that is what the news has become. NOT NEWS, but merely opinion pieces all the way and all geared to tote someones party line or agenda, no doubts about it. (I spent three semester studying how to manipulate statistics to say exactly what I was taught *the [lay] people* needed to hear, and how they should read it ~ always keeping in mind their inability to think for themselves and translate the statistics that I somehow now could? Oh Pleeze!
. . however, even though I freelance for a few specific (alternative) magazines here and there these days, I do not work in mainstream journalism because as Spike so succinctly summed it up for me;
Mind you I did have a stint as a rural stringer for a while, for a city paper, which was really good fun as I was allowed to write pretty much unedited. But as *Achmed the Dead terrorist would say, *that all changed when the new guy came into the training camp.*
*google the video of same name for a comedy sketch of ventriloquistic hillarity.
But I digress. What about blogging?
Well from what I see blogging is about opinion too, so not very different, albeit interactive where you get a chance to interact with the *article* itself as it were in a personal and not dispassionate way. Sure the you can comment on the newspaper, but nobody cares there. This interaction has its place in the human psyche, as it allows us a certain reclaiming of power to question the authority that is writing the opinion piece in the first place. Perhaps why tempers flare so readily as years of frustration is unleashed? Anyeehoo newspapers do not let you do that, so it explains the popularity of blogging perhaps and why it may well supersede newspapers. however I think newspapers will hang on until the older baby boomers have long gone, because for some stupid reason the majority still believe that if it is written in print in a newspaper, it must be more authorative than on a screen on the internet . .. although taht may well be a matter of the slowness of humanity to accept change?
I remember my professor asking this question to the class on whether we felt that the internet would take over and newspapers would cease to be. We had to come up with about 10 goodreasons each and read them out to the class. Perhaps the most pertinent answer that supported the continuation of newspapers was their portability. However, back then they hadn*t invented palmtops, although $1 for a portable fax fix of news is cheaper than running a blackberry? (I don*t know because I don*t have one, but am asuming this is true)?
To me both newspapers and blogs are there to inflame, distract and obscure with endless opinion. . I have to agree with Mrs M, if you want REAL NEWS these days, read a book about something real in the world by someone (and usually a journo who is sick of toting the party line) who has used the freedom the press today doesn*t offer, to research and print ALL the FACTS, not just the condensed version of diatribe that has been sived through the mill of those who set the thickness of the plates.
Again, I enjoyed this post Chris, well done.
Lilla . .
Comment by Chris Champion
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I have always gotten "real news" by reading unadorned wire copy (easy these days through Google news). Objective commentary can be found in books, as you say, and occasionally in print media. But here's the thing - blogging is revolutionising publishing. It's cheaper, more efficient, more immediate, more versatile and more wide-reaching than books. Arguably, many books have been written in the past because the blogging option was not there.
Many thanks for taking the time to post such a huge and thoughtful comment.
Comment by Lilla
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.. and that kinda brings me back to the main point. It takes no training to write a blog. I mean, outside of a fairly good comprehension of the language and pop~politics, its takes little or no specially trained skills.
Lay people, searching the tabloids and Newspages (or info streams [as you say]) to write novice pieces, garnered for opinions; to confuse more, or to make sure that no dictatorship can ensue?
That may well be the question?
Lilla . .