Page 86 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

WRITING FOR THE WEB

to something experienced in real life or seen elsewhere on the Web.
They are generally rendered in text, but photos, video, and audio are
also increasingly common.
Their most potent characteristic is that they are two-way streets.
Blogs are a way to carry on a discussion about whatever subject has its
own special region of the blogosphere buzzing at the moment. The
blogosphere is an ever-changing constellation of sites talking about
everything under the sun. It is a place with very few boundaries where
people can experiment with form, content, and language. It is the
antithesis of a large news organization.
A blog is personal, direct, and interactive. It is the human voice and
imagination amplified by the power of the Web. War, politics, and pop
culture are all obsessed over and reported on by bloggers. You name a
topic and someone probably has a blog about it.
Journalists are most interested in three types of blogs: blogs that
report news, blogs that critique the news, and special-interest blogs
that serve as news sources.
Blogs that report the news are the most interesting phenomenon.
76 Many mainstream media outlets now have their own blogs, often tied
to editors or news personalities.
The blogs to watch are the ones that pop up in areas where news
is happening. Whether it is a revolution in one of the former Soviet
republics or the war in Iraq, someone with a front-row seat is blogging
about it. This is granular-level news. This is unfiltered news available to
a global audience. This is the public taking over where the professional
journalist can’t—or won’t—go. Journalists are often said to be writing
the first draft of history. Bloggers caught in the middle of historic
events are now writing history as it happens.
The catch is that these are amateur journalists. Their goals are varied
and their motives are not always clear. Their methods are unprofes-
sional and their stories are anecdotal. Many people in the business
hesitate to even call it journalism.
While some professional journalists are skeptical of the value
of bloggers as reporters, teaming hordes of bloggers are constantly
hounding mainstream media about its failures, real and imagined.
Pressure from the blogosphere has already forced the media to cover
stories that would otherwise have been ignored. More importantly,
bloggers have even forced news groups to admit journalistic failures.
These Web-based critics range from intellectuals to political cranks.
Many are screaming at the top of their lungs in a wilderness so vast that