I’ve been reading and digesting the new Pew study of bloggers (page, PDF) that’s been making headlines this week. The study’s central finding — that the majority of bloggers are in it as a creative personal outlet, blog occasionally rather than obsessively and don’t seek or expect mass readership — come as no surprise. But the coverage, along with portions of the report itself, reveals some confusion about the relationship between blogging and journalism. Let’s dig in.
Take that Chronicle story. Its lead tells us that we think that bloggers are “pajama-wearing partisan ranters” who “fancy themselves a new type of journalist.” Now, thanks to Pew, we can see that in fact bloggers are “more like Christina Palsky,” who “blogs as a creative outlet and does not fancy herself a journalist.”
Note that we are being told that there’s an either/or situation here: Either you’re a wannabe-journalist partisan ranter who dreams of making a big splash or you’re a creative diarist who blogs for friends and relatives.
This misses the most interesting characteristic of blogging (and the Pew report, though less oversimplified than the Chronicle piece, misses it too): because of the nature of the Web, any posting to a little public diary can, under the right circumstances, end up in a national or global spotlight. Every “I’m just doing it for myself” blogger is a potential journalist. If you’re in the right (or wrong) place and time — when the next tsunami hits, say, or the next Rodney King incident unfolds — and you decide to write about it or post photos or video, you’re a journalist, whether you think of yourself as one or not. You’re witnessing events and telling the world about them. And the Web’s structure means that the information you provide can spread quickly and widely.
At its worst, if people see blogging as a competition for the spotlight, this potential could drive people to do dumb things to attract attention. This happens, but it’s hardly epidemic. At its best, it creatively blurs the boundaries of the old mass-market news world. Every “consumer” of news is also a potential producer.
I am saying nothing new here. It’s just strange to see the Pew report — and the discussion around it — fail to take note of the obvious.
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