Blog Journalism

Last weekend's FT had a nice long article on blogs, asking the question, "Will blogs replace traditional news media?" After a rather tortuous set of examples and anecdotes, the conclusion was "No."

For me that's rather obvious.

Just looking at the mix of blogs out there, the author skipped over all the classwork blogs (2), spam blogs, diary blogs (9), travel blogs, advice blogs (2), photo blogs (1) and others that I couldn't classify (3), to concentrate on current event blogs (3). (The numbers are classification of 20 blogs found by hitting the "Next Blog" button 20 times - where have all the spam blogs gone?)

These 15% of current event blogs are basically regurgitation of information taken from other blogs, or from traditional media. Look! I'm doing it too! Quite frankly, what can the amateur journalists write about if they have no time to go out and gather news. So we can't replace the news-gathering function of the media - we'll have to make do with writing opinion columns, gossip columns or just plain plagiarism. The professional journalists can sleep soundly, for now.

OMG - I'm beginning to sound like Bev Trayner!