Blogging as a Form of Journalism Pt. 1

Blogging as a Form of Journalism, by J.D. Lasica.

External source – from Mark Deuze: The web and its journalisms

This article was first posted in 2001, and edited later in 2002. Lasica discusses how blogging can be a form of journalism. Lasica states that the blogging phenomenon may sow the seeds for new forms of journalism and public discourse – creating an online community.

“But a funny thing happened on the way to the Web’s irrelevance: the blogging phenomenon, a grassroots movement that may sow the seeds for new forms of journalism, public discourse, interactivity and online community.”

This is a very early post when the Internet was just beginning to thrive and become more accessible for people. Lasica explains what a blog is and the point of it.

Lasica talks with Paul Andrews, a journalist who owns his own blog. He argues that not everyone with a blog is a journalist, but professionals dismiss bloggers without taking the posts into consideration. Bloggers are considered amateurs and without a journalism degree, one is not a journalist.

Andrews points out that people are turning to the Internet and webloggers for news and information because mainstream news media has lost much of its credibility. This is something that just about everyone now knows.

Lasica also talks to Deborah Branscum who is a contributing editor for Newsweek. Branscum highlights four points that make weblogs attractive: Creative freedom, instantaneity, interactivity, and lack of marketing constraints.

This is just another thing that journalists in 2001-2002 were noticing and it has now become plain obvious why many create their own blogs.

Finally, Glenn Fleishman highlights one major advantage of weblogging. A blogger is not at the mercy of big media. A blogger can write about almost anything without being told by editors or anyone else to not publish their work. And bloggers are able to write extensively on something they feel passionate about.

It’s interesting that at the turn of the decade, the most obvious points of weblogging that everyone knows now were being discussed back then.