The article referenced above was just a link to someone else discussing the topic. It did, though, also link to a past journalism vs. blogging incident in which DM was involved (which I’m not sure if you read).

That entailed a local reporter who covered candidates for his paper, as news stories not opinion, but also maintained a personal blog that was highly partisan. He also threatened another blogger and tipped off a candidate friend of his to a possible investigation.

The topic of whether a supposed unbiased reporter could also run a partisan blog on the side and not hurt the integrity of their stories and paper prompted an interesting comment thread on a UNR journalism blog. I also solicited opinions from other journalism experts.

In the end, most thought it was a bad idea and a few suggested it was a disgrace to journalism and the offending reporter should be fired. And after his actions were exposed by a few blogs, he was.

Thanks for feedback on my EOTO. The “Disasters in the Internet Age” is a good article and it was one of the five resources I listed on my blog.

There has been a lot of great information exchanged with all of the class blogs this week. I am happy to report that I have learned a great deal and now have a better appreciation for the positive aspects of blogging. It stimulates discussion, interaction, and a sense of community.

On her blog: Blogging into the future, Amanda Clark brings back the fear that is forcing journalists re-think and re-invent their craft for the last years. “Will blogs take over the world of reporting and cause readers to turn to them instead of their local newspapers?”
In the mid-nineties, a great professor from University of Navarra, Jose Luis Orihuela, formulated an interesting analogy that still resounds with me. He presented the case of the medieval monks that faced with the revolutionary invention of print, found themselves without their traditional occupation, of handwriting books. Instead of competing with the invention, they prefer re-invent their role becoming brewers.
The question therefore is: what will be our “beer”? What are we going to do different? I do agree that a way to “combat the issue is for newspapers to simply start reporting better.” Yet, I am afraid it will be more complicated than that. I am not sure that as Amanda suggests, “the popularity of blogs will slowly diminish and newspapers will again come out on top.” The journalistic product has to defeat the alternative. It should be appealing enough to remain superior to its blogosphere counterpart.
During the last week’s local elections, I was able to obtain more helpful local information from blogs than from the conventional media. In the other hand, when it comes to global issues, my experience is that blogs mostly repeat information originated by the conventional media.
I have to still discover what will be the twist we may provide to local papers, to produce our “beer,” but I can think in one fundamental difference: journalist get paid.

You’ve taken an issue that I’ve followed for a while and reminded me why it’s such a personal issue: the future of my own job. I’ve spent a lot of my time in this certifcate program following what’s going on in newspapers and how the industry is changing. It’s been a tremendous learning experience to see what other newspapers are doing around the world to get online. I’m glad to see you’ve brought it back down to a personal level rather than the more 10,000-feet view I’ve been taking. And, it’s really great to hear from someone who’s working in a smaller newsroom,

I enjoyed reading your resources, the Blogs vs. Newspapers and Gladwell’s response. Gladwell notes that it’s very difficult to find anyone who hasn’t been influenced by anyone. I find it’s sometimes hard to find completely original thoughts online. I’ll often read things that are links to someone else who’s saying the same thing and linking to the same places. As both the Shirley Temple post and Gladwell note, I’m looking for a diverse group of original content for my news.

However, news blogs have been around long enough to start to appear as the subject of scholarly research. The journalism journals are beginning to publish article about the relationship between blogs and mainstream, traditional newspapers. For newspapers, the news seems to be that blogs are not replacing newspapers or journalism as a source of news, but that blogs are filling a role that newspaper do not, or are not, filling.

Regrettably, the most interesting journal articles are not available online, and time has not been sufficient to get a hard copy, but the online abstracts are interesting.

• “Mapping the blogosphere: Professional and citizen-based media in the global news arena” Journalism; Jun2007, Vol. 8 Issue 3, p235-261. This study analyzed the online network and link patterns involving six of the most popular news and political blogs, to determine their relationship to other blogs and the traditional news media. Findings suggest a relationship that is more complementary than competitive, with blogs relying heavily on professional news reporting for actual news content. [Perhaps suggestive of blogs being more analysis and opinion in their nature than a source of hard news?]

• “Use of Blogs as a Source of News Presents Little Threat to Mainline News Media” Newspaper Research Journal; Winter2007, Vol. 28 Issue 1, p99-102. This article reported on the impact of blogs as a news source on other media such as television and newspapers. One survey the article discussed, from 2006, from the Scripps Survey Research Center and Scripps Howard News Service in the U.S., found that only about 12 percent of survey respondents said they receive news from blogs in the week prior to the survey, and that only about 7 percent said they received news in two days in the previous week. [Again, perhaps suggestive that blogs may not be the source of hard news they are perceived to be?]

• “Mapping the journalism–blogging relationship” Journalism; Nov2006, Vol. 7 Issue 4, p477-500. This study also mapped the journalism-blogging relationship, through examining occupations. The study suggests that occupations exist within a network of other occupations that encroach into each other’s jurisdictional areas. External factors in the network of relationships include institutional loyalties and revenue needs. Internal factors include the degree that journalists can control the situations they face and their success in solving problems. The difficulties posed by the combination of these factors has led traditional journalism to neglect some types of news information, which in turn has been poached by bloggers. Some of these poached areas include opinion and partisan expression, “old stories” that journalism abandoned, stories driven by private and non-elite sources, and highly specialized content. [Perhaps suggestive that blogs are taking stories that journalism is not covering – perhaps filling a gap?]

Again, only the abstracts for the above three article are available. But it seems that some interesting information is emerging from the scholarly research.

• The article “Why Gartner’s blog estimates are shortsighted” in Communication World, May-June 2007 (available online, but through the Davis Library e-research facility) concludes that blogging is entering a phase of normalization and that blogs are being recognized as credible sources of information. This is described as blogs entering a “conversational era” as an information source, in a large degree a factor of a leading-edge technology becoming established the mainstream of personal and business communication.

You can access it at the following link: http://mcalabre1.wordpress.com/eoto-part-ii-reactions-to-eoto-issues/

Thanks,
Marina

I like your site as well. I’m really drawn to it because I’m new to the whole blogging thing just like you. And I’m interested to learn more and to see where it’s going to take journalism. J-schools will have to start teaching new media almost on par with traditional. But I’m speculating. Good job!