The Wake

After several years of dismissing and scorning bloggers, the media can no longer deny their influence. They are the bastard children of the media profession, walking the line between heroes and pests. Bloggers have had their moments of journalistic greatness only to slip back into their role as pajama gossipers.

Mainstream media has been able to reap the benefits of good blogging while deriding the medium as a joke, but that cannot last forever. Either bloggers need to be given the credit that is due or they need to be ignored by the media, and no longer influence print publications, Web sites and broadcasts. Judging from the way things are going, bloggers will soon be just another outlet of the journalism world; in some ways they already are.

Bloggers in the Media

Bloggers have gained acceptance in the media, through use by the media. In spring 2004, Reuters attributed the scoop that broke the story of Cometa Networks’ closure to a blogger.

Politically conservative bloggers are credited with exposing the CBS News scandal with Dan Rather within hours of the initial broadcast. Matt Drudge, perhaps one of the most famous bloggers, made his debut by breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In both cases, the mainstream media took the scoop from the blogging community before turning it into a major story of their own.

The Guardian, a liberal newspaper out of London, sponsors the Guardian British Blog awards. Could this be the beginning of a blogger Pulitzer Prize?

World Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press (just to name a few) all quote bloggers, giving attributions to the blogger and his or her post or the Web site.

NBC News invited blogger Ana Marie Cox to discuss with Tom Brokaw the Internet’s role in the 2004 presidential election, according to a November Washington Post article. America’s top-rated news anchor interviewed bloggers about the election. This seems like acceptance to me.

What’s keeping them out?

Journalism is research combined in a report for the masses. Broken down, to most journalists, this means gathering information, crafting stories and publishing or broadcasting them in some mass medium for the public to consume.

Many media professionals criticize bloggers for not creating journalism. Instead, professionals believe that bloggers borrow, and in some cases steal, journalism. Professionals argue that bloggers cannot do what they do without the traditional media.

Chris Ison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and visiting professor at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication says, “most of us don’t think of bloggers as the media any more than a letter writer is media.” But with the onset of technology they have now become part of the media, according to Ison.

According to Nick Coleman, a columnist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “[reading] bloggers is an important part of being informed. But separating the actual credible ones from the irresponsible, un-credible ones needs to be taught.”

“Checks and balances” are a key difference between published writers and bloggers, according to Ison. “When someone is sponsored by a creditable news organization you at least have that going for you; if it’s just some guy’s blog, it is harder to know.”

Andrew Sullivan, a blogger and journalist, says in Time, “The critics of blogs cite their lack of professionalism. Piffle. The dirty little secret of journalism is that it isn’t really a profession. It’s a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience, and you’re all set. You get better at it merely by doing it – which is why fancy journalism schools are, to my mind, such a waste of time.”

But what about the blogger who lacks a conscience?

“The more creditable ones that do their reporting, and prove to be right and well sourced; those bloggers will rise to the top,” says Ison.

Journalist by day, blogger by night

Media outlets illustrate the rift between journalism and blogging in how they deal with bloggers in their own ranks. Again, there is no consensus.

Andrew Sullivan’s blog, andrewsullivan.com is madly successful. He boasts 800,000 hits per month from 220,000 readers. Sullivan contributes to The New Republic, Time and is also a former editor of The New Republic. Clearly he is a journalist.

Steve Olafson is a former Houston Chronicle reporter. In spring 2001, Olafson started a blog that described a visit he had to a Denny’s where the pancakes he ate were bad. Later his blog discussed his Chronical beat.

Other media organizations picked up on this and notified his editors. “Editor Jeff Cohen called him in and said, ‘I’m running a mainstream American newspaper. There’s no place here for gonzo journalism. Take the f—ing site down!’” according to Media Ethics: Issues and Cases, by Philip Patterson and Lee Wilkins. Olafson took the site down and was fired from his job.

“Mr. Olafson said that when his identity became known, his boss said that he had compromised his ability to do his job … Mr. Olafson said that news media companies should develop policies about employees’ sites. ‘It’s just so new I think most papers haven’t caught up with it,’” according to a New York Times article by David Gallagher.

Glenn Fleishman, a blogger and reporter, is responsible for breaking the story on Cometa Networks going out of business. On his Web site, Fleishman says that he is a book author, author for two blogs and contributes articles to The New York Times, The Seattle Times, InfoWorld, MacWorld, PC World and numerous other publications. If Fleishman’s blogging doesn’t bother editors at those publications, it must be O.K., right?

Sheila Lennon is a producer at The Providence Journal Web site where she writes a blog. She also publishes a personal Web log, lennon2.com. Her personal blog contains no information that could compromise her objectivity, according to David Gallagher’s New York Times Article.

These cases show the inconsistencies in a medium that is not totally developed.

Clearly, the editors of the Houston Chronicle had a serious problem with Olafson expressing his views on the Web as well as reporting objectively for the newspaper. The more recent examples, however, show that some of the nation’s leading publications either a) are so un-informed about their editors and contributing writers that they are unaware that they have blogs – this being a disturbing fact for a whole different set of reasons or b) they are aware of the blogs and believe that it does not factor into their ability to be quality reporters.

Bloggers and the law

Whether bloggers are journalists may seem like a question of syntax. Constitutionally, there’s no distinction between media professionals and the public at large. The hard-and-fast assurance of a free press under the First Amendment, which has long guarded journalists from government punishment for publishing unpopular views, protects, in the words of former Supreme Court Justice Byron White, “the lonely pamphleteer” just as much as the “large metropolitan publisher.”

Last month, California’s highest court ruled in Apple v. Does that bloggers could not use the state’s shield law, which protects journalists from revealing their sources, as an excuse to clam up about where they got Apple Computer trade secrets published on their sites. But this ruling cannot be construed as labeling bloggers journalistic wannabes. Judge James P. Kleinberg made it clear that even traditional journalists would have had to cough up sources, as trade law trumps California’s relatively weak shield law. The moral of the story for bloggers: Even being counted among the distinguished men and women of the press doesn’t make you invulnerable to the law.

Cases like Apple v. Does may, in other states, be the impetus for a legal definition of blogger because some state shield laws guarantee broad protection to journalists. Minnesota statute 595.023 seems to protect bloggers: [N]o person who is or has been directly engaged in the gathering, procuring, compiling, editing, or publishing of information for the purpose of transmission, dissemination or publication to the public shall be required … to disclose in any proceeding the person or means from or through which information was obtained. But in states where definitions are less clear, judges will have to decide.

Choose a hat

Donald Brazeal, a University of Minnesota professor and a former editor at The Washington Post, believes that things are not so black and white for journalists who have blogs. “Having a blog inherently doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. But if [journalists] are using the blog contrary to the newspaper’s ethical politics then I think it’s a firing offense.

“I am very uncomfortable with a journalist moving into any channel of communication and starting to proclaim their opinions about things. If they are striving to be fair, balanced journalists, they should be committed to doing that and for them to think that they can wear one hat at a news organization and then wear a different kind of hat at a Web log and start expressing their opinion – I am very uncomfortable with.”

Media truth and quality – but where do the bloggers fit in?

Clearly, bloggers have advanced aspects of the media, holding them to higher standards of truth and accuracy, holding the media accountable.

According to Sullivanblogs “provide the best scrutiny of big media imaginable – ratcheting up the standards of the professional, adding new voices, new perspectives and new facts every minute. The genius lies not so much in the bloggers themselves but in the transparent system they have created.”

So bloggers inspire communication and give more voice to society. But are they journalists? Bloggers rely on the professional side of the mass media for their material, according to Brazeal. Even Sullivan is willing to admit this. He says, “Blogs depend on the journalistic resources of big media to do the bulk of reporting and analysis.”

There is not a problem with bloggers calling themselves journalists, according to Ison. “The question is, are they a good journalist? And are they transparent? Do we know what they are in it for? What do we know about them?” says Ison.

With a newspaper, Ison argues, there is background information. The readers know the newspapers’ methods and philosophy in addition to their history. Ison believes that bloggers who replicate this will be successful. “A blog is pretty much useless if you don’t know who’s writing it - that’s the bottom line,” says Ison.

One up the media

Blogs do things that the traditional media can only dream of, and this scares media outlets. Blogs are do-it-yourself journalism; arguably the most direct form of journalism.

Reporter Kevin Sites is evidence of this. Sites holds a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and now reports for himself on a blog, www.kevinsites.net, most recently from Iraq. His work forms the point where blogging and Internet journalism become one and the same.

Sites also does freelance work for NBC and CNN, but was asked by CNN to discontinue his blog while working for them.

Why would CNN do that? A quick read of Sites’ site reveals he only reports what he sees. His writing lacks opinion, but is powerful in a different respect. His blogs transport a reader to Iraq like no news organization could ever do. Sites is embedded like other reporters, but his writing is so alive. Even after all the images, articles, and excessive media reports from Iraq, a visit to Sites’s blog makes the war seem like it started yesterday. Is it his writing? Maybe. Sites is a thorough journalist and takes risks unlike others, but there is a feeling of intimacy to the action when you read Sites’s blog. His images and stories lack institutionalizing and come directly to the viewer.

Dan Froomkin writes washingtonpost.com’s White House Briefing in addition to other Internet editorial jobs for other Web sites. Froomkin believes that bloggers have really started to crack the nut on Internet journalism. In “Ideas for Online Publications: Lessons From Blogs, Other Signposts,” Froomkin encourages the traditional media to follow the lead of the bloggers by using the full potential of the Internet.

Froomkin writes this hypothetical, “consider if you were starting a ‘newspaper’ today, wouldn’t you want to facilitate exchanges with readers? Wouldn’t you want to encourage your readers to find out more than what you can publish? Wouldn’t you want to make it easier for them to take action? Wouldn’t you want to define and create a community? Wouldn’t you want to make your readers feel important?”

“Blog tools give you all that – not to mention the ability to easily and quickly post something you just found out about. (What could be more journalistic?),” says Froomkin.

That is an awfully good question. Shouldn’t every good news organization want its readers to know as much as they are able to gather about any given topic, even if it is not from their pages or channel? (YES NO) HINT: Every news organization, regardless of status should circle YES.

But do they? NO. Is there a resistance to change? PROBABLY. Could major news organizations, specifically publications, be questioning why they should conform to the ways of the basement-dwelling, superhero of the night — the blogger? YES.

“We should be turning our online journalists into personalities – even celebrities – rather than encouraging them to be as faceless as their print colleagues. The Internet demands voice. … The time has come for online newspapers to embrace [the] online community,” says Froomkin. And the publications say “ouch!”

Future of bloggers

Bloggers are the future of media because they give us information. Time will show which bloggers can be trusted as journalists and columnists.

It appears that the mainstream media wants to be a part of the blogging world, and have hired columnists they do not edit to do the job.

The mainstream media should react soon to the bloggers while they still have the money and audience to do so. Otherwise, journalists like Sites, who go out and do their own writing and reporting, publishing it in a blog, could overrun them. Not only by taking away advertising dollars, but by giving journalists the opportunity and freedom to work for themselves and not a media conglomerate. No, it won’t be tomorrow, but it is a possibility for the future.

What are journalism schools going to do when kids show up wanting to become professional bloggers? To a degree it is already happening with Internet journalism. I can tell you from personal experience that Internet journalism ethical codes and laws are still highly debated, not to say that in traditional media all the legal and ethical issues are sorted out. But in Internet journalism key pieces of the profession, like a publication’s ethical codes or style issues, are still in the early stages of development.

This said, Internet journalism has reached a point beyond a hobby or a fad. Ethical and legal debates as well as professional instruction need to increase exponentially or we could have an even greater media crisis. Imagine the mainstream media in shambles, financially driven out of business, but the new medium, lacking direction. Whom can you trust then?

It is important that the new medium also hold its independence, as it most certainly will, being a free publisher. The media critic A.J. Liebling said, “freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those that own one.” Now that press, and the voice that comes with it, is freer than ever.

Conrad Wilson is the contributing editor for The Wake and welcomes comments at office@wakenews.org.