Blogging collides with journalism
The new real estate blogger initially doesn't see the convergence of blogging with journalism. After a few months experience, the realization that their blog is a journalistic endeavor dawns on them. After all, for hyperlocal bloggers, it's real time published coverage of their market and community.
Here are the indications that blogging and journalism are colliding, as explained by Time Magazine writer turned TechCrunch co-author Erick Schonfeld:
- Blogs like TechCrunch are hiring writers and newspapers are forcing their writers to have blogs
- Professional blogs and mainstream media share the top spots on the Techmeme leaderboard. Blogs compete with MSM, with a fraction of the staff.
- Professional blogs live or die by how fast articles post after a story breaks. Blogs break news faster than CNN... remember, newspapers used to sustain credibility this way long ago ("Extra, extra").
- Blogs are 24-by-7 endeavors... no long investigative pieces with fact checking and extensive interviewing.
- Blog articles may be iterative... since blogs support conversations
more readily, a partial or incomplete article may be filled out by data
or information from the readership. This is much more efficient than the individual search efforts of one journalist.
- Many bloggers are superficial, writing a lot of content with no original thought.
Why? It's easy to write an article that refers to a current event,
another article or an interpretation of an article (I'm doing that
right now). Original content is tough to come up with because it takes
too much time.
At Transparent, I do strive for some kind of original or eclectic thinking. Most articles are derived from current events or ideas I've gleaned from other blogs (or even Twitter feeds), usually from outside the real estate blogosphere, and then applied to real estate industry and strategy. Since I tend to focus on longer, detailed articles, I generally don't have the time to write two posts per day, nor participate in the extracurricular activities associated with blogging/Web 2.0 - commenting, Twittering, and reading through a whole docket of RSS feeds. I simultaneously envy and respect those bloggers who can participate in the continuous conversation I see through Twitter, Facebook and all those social networks.
I also think a key difference is that bloggers generally do not pretend to be impartial. Bias is admitted, much like a columnist compared to a journalist.
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Not everyone could be a journalist, but writing "trash" is more than easy.
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Bloggers are trained in their respective professions - not as Journalists - yet they develop and incorporate this skill from which to make an additional contribution within their chosen field, such as real estate, insurance, law, technology, etc..
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There may be some overlap, but bloggers as they are today can't replace professional journalists. Paid journalists have editors and answer to their higher authority. Bloggers, even if they're paid, rarely have to be responsible to anyone but themselves.
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