8
2005
For the last time: Is "blogging" journalism?
I have two answers to that and whaddya know, they're the same.
First, over at Personal Democracy Forum, I took a look at a silly story that appeared in The America Prospect's on-line edition. Any story published on-line that begins "the Internet took three scalps" deserves what it gets once it has the temerity to appear in public.
While I was typing away, Dan Fost, The San Francisco Chronicle's media writer called up to chat about Apple's suits against three on-line sites that had the nerve to break a little news ahead of MacWorld. Apple says they're not journalists. Apple's wrong.
So here's your answer: Blogging is a technology; it's a software that makes it easy to publish in HTML on the World Wide Web. Reporting and writing – the basics of journalism – are things you do with that technology. See the difference? Thought so.
Okay. That's enough on this. Like Jeff Jarvis, I am sick of the entire topic. It's silly and it's beside the point. The technology exists. People are using it. For better or worse.
We'll let the Big Media folks mull this one over for now. They ought to have it worked out by the end of the year.