The Detroit News' Chris McCosky wrote this dandy today. It it called "Bloggers aren't Journalists." Duh!
Bloggers don't consider themselves Journalists and I doubt they want to be Journalists. Most bloggers that I know think that journalists are boobs. Bloggers are simply people with something to offer; they create content that the audience finds valuable and/or entertaining.
I think most journalists are smart, hard working and dead serious about their craft but let's face it, there are also a lot who are lazy, arrogant and have an agenda. Do you think there would be such interests in blogs if Journalists weren't seen as one-sided and lazy? I doubt it. In sports journalism there are way too many writers who are boot licker's, they fall for the team spin all the time or their access to the team is SHUT down!
I'd be willing to bet that many of the great Journalists of our time would laugh at current writers, why, because there is no such thing as investigative reporting. Most is just slapped together and thrown in the paper.
In the article Chris mentions that the line is getting blurry between real Journalists and bloggers. Who's fault do you think that is? It is the newspaper's fault for asking their columnists to BLOG. Why would you put one of your columnists on the same level as Joe Blogger in his P.J.'s!? Newspapers can only blame themselves if the line is blurred.
I like Chris, but I think this article is useless. It is insulting to the reader, don't you think they understand the difference between a reporter and a blogger? Taking your audiences intelligence for granted is also not the way to gain readers trust.
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