 |
 |
 |
|
Journalism: What You Do, Not Where You Publish
At the risk of nurturing my curmudgeonly side, I've always found it difficult to see blogs as a revolution in journalism. A blog is a place to put words. So is a newspaper. A batch of words don't necessarily merit the label of journalism just because they're published in a newspaper. Ditto words published on a blog. (I might buy a printing plant and start distributing my observations in broadsheet format, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm a journalist.) However defined, journalism is what someone does to create a piece that merits that label. How and where the piece is published doesn't matter. I equate journalism with reporting the news, not with the habit of keeping a journal. Blogs do provide a wonderful publishing platform for keepers of journals, or whatever else, but, in terms of reporting the news, they are just another place to put words and are subject to the same issues of skill, technique, fairness, accuracy, timeliness and credibility that have always affected that profession.
|
