For the sake of attendees at tonight’s panel at the Berkeley Journalism School, and anyone else interested, I’m posting some links to previous Salon articles on the subject — because I’ve sort of said my piece on the subject of “blogging and journalists” already:
Much Ado About Blogging (May 10, 2002): Is it the end of journalism as we know it? Or just 6 zillion writers in search of an editor? Key points: Typically, the debate about blogs today is framed as a duel to the death between old and new journalism. Many bloggers see themselves as a Web-borne vanguard, striking blows for truth- telling authenticity against the media-monopoly empire. Many newsroom journalists see bloggers as wannabe amateurs badly in need of some skills and some editors. This debate is stupidly reductive… The professional journalist can still accomplish things that, so far at least, no blogger has managed…. But blogs can do some things the pros can’t…. The editorial process of the blogs takes place between and among bloggers, in public, in real time, with fully annotated cross-links. This carries pluses and minuses: At worst, it creates a lot of excess verbiage that only the most fanatically interested reader would want to wade through. At best, it creates a dramatic and dynamic exchange of information and ideas.Is there any doubt that, on balance, we come out ahead? |
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Fear of Links (May 28, 1999): While professional journalists turn up their noses, weblog pioneers invent a new, personal way to organize the Web’s chaos. Key points: On the Web, with its unspannable abundance of chaotic and ill-organized information, pointing people to good links is a fundamental service — a combination of giving directions to strangers and sharing one’s discoveries with friends. All of which explains why a phenomenon known as the weblog is one of the fastest-growing and most fertile creative areas on the Web today… Weblogs, typically, are personal Web sites operated by individuals who compile chronological lists of links to stuff that interests them, interspersed with information, editorializing and personal asides. A good weblog is updated often, in a kind of real-time improvisation, with pointers to interesting events, pages, stories and happenings elsewhere on the Web. New stuff piles on top of the page; older stuff sinks to the bottom. |
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Baring Your Soul to the Web (July 3, 1998): This was a Salon cover story by Simon Firth about the pre-blog phenomenon of Web diaries — an art that, interestingly, some leading practitioners felt in 1998 was already “over,” done, tired. Provides a little perspective on the cyclical nature of enthusiasm for Web innovation, and on the way we keep reinventing the wheel every couple of years — but with better tools, dammit! |
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