: Shoot from hip, hit foot…The year in gasblogging…
Mark Glaser, of Online Journalism Review, rounds up 2003 and polls experts about what might happen in digital journalism in 2004. This is an entertaining read as year-end prognostications go, but I think Vin Crosbie, of Digital Deliverance, has it about right:
I don’t expect anything important to happen in online journalism during 2004. Though there might be modestly incremental increases in the amount of original reporting done online, most news sites will simply continue to shovel their print or broadcast editions’ contents online, plus attempt to transplant their traditional media’s business models online. Unfortunately, not a lot of that shoveling or transplantation makes sense. Declining media put online does not ascending media make.
There’s plenty of commentary about blogging and journalism. And it appears we now have a new term to deal with: gasbloggers, which are “self-aggrandizing gasbag bloggers…who attempt to take credit for events that would have occurred anyway, in the normal news cycle.” I suppose this may refer, among other things, to what happened with the Trent Lott story. Sorry, but Talking Points Memo and others did keep that story alive until mainstream journalism finally caught on.
Yes, and let’s remember that just because “established media” does not recognize “blog chatter” doesn’t mean that blog chatter doesn’t affect its participants.
i.e., CNN etc. might continue to expend HOURS on Laci Peterson, Kobe Bryant, etc., but they may just be missing out on the “hot topic” on the web. Blogs may not be able to (substantially) “take credit for events that would have occurred anyway,” but they MAY be able to take credit for a higher level of discourse. (Obviously, not all blogs, or all blog chatter).
I, for one, have switched in the past year from taking my “news” from traditional outlets (print and television, and to a lesser extent radio) to relying primarily on internet news. I defintely look to the web to provide “the rest of the story.” I now view traditional outlets to see how they measure up to what I’ve learned on the internet.
There are blogs that provide “fact checking” or blogs such as yours that provide “background.” The internet provides access to international resources, while traditional media outlets may rely upon “wire services,” thus constricting the available “news.”
I think traditional media are dismissing these facts to their own detriment. I am not quite as evangelical as Jeff Jarvis, but the plurality available on the internet is certainly going to hold established media outlets to a new standard.
What cj said. All you have to do is compare the “reporting” from the major media outlets to blogs by Iraqis, our soldiers and even guys with the CPA to realize how out of touch, error-filled and trite the news has become in the hands of the national press. Honestly, sometimes I think they file their “reports” with the dateline “Iraq”, but are actually writing from the comfort of their homes in Manhattan or DC! They have really let us down.