San Jose State University journalism professor Richard Craig jumps into the blogs-vs.-journalism debate with a well-reasoned op-ed piece appearing in today’s San Jose Mercury News. Craig wins points by noting the whole debate is specious, but goes on to explain why.
He lists several points, my favorite of which is: “Declaring that blogs equal journalism is like saying that television equals journalism-people mistake the medium for the message.”
Exactly! Craig points to the vast majority of blogs that are used for nothing even close to journalism. “A tiny minority (of bloggers) choose to gather and report news, and, among these, there are outlets both legitimate and loony.” Ultimately, he says, readers can make up their own minds about the validity of any given piece of reporting. “…Good reporting is generally self-evident,” Craig writes, “and it’s not necessarily the exclusive property of the journalism industry.
“Freedom of information has always been a bedrock principle of journalism, so why should journalists themselves suddenly want to impose professional boundaries upon it?”
I like this guy. The rest of the piece is worth reading, but as the argument against character blogs continues with Steve Rubel’s dismissal of the tactic, I keep coming back to Craig’s notion of confusing the medium with the message.
There’s a blogosphere with genuine voices of real people talking about things that matter, and that’s a great and powerful thing. There are also lightweight CMS tools called blogs that can be used for all kinds of other purposes. If Barbie starts blogging to little girls, it doesn’t diminish the power or value of the blogosphere, and little girls might just eat it up.
Whether we’re talking about news blogs vs. personal journals or “real” blogs vs. character blogs, let’s not forget that blogs are just a medium that can and will be put to multple uses (or what I have defined as “multiple evolutionary paths”). It’s the quality of the message that matters.
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
