The Media Drop

On Saturday, the American Journalism Review posted this article, entitled “The Expanding Blogosphere,” by Rachel Smolkin. Smolkin gives details on a lot of the “A-List” bloggers, including Glenn Reynolds, Mickey Kaus, Andrew Sullivan, and Kevin Drum. Buzz Machine’s Jeff Jarvis says “The people are now talking,” when describing the growth of blogging as a way for people to share their opinions.

And the news media are gingerly following the people’s lead. The line between pure political bloggers and “Big Journalism,” as Reynolds calls it, is fading.

I think “the line” is definitely fading a little bit, but are the news media going the direction of what bloggers are looking for and looking into? If the news media *did* follow what bloggers were posting as the “important” stories of the day, then you would see vastly different things on MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN at the same time of day, except in cases of major news stories. What a concept! If this is the case, then do Glenn Reynolds, Josh Marshall, and others end up being the psuedo pre-producers of the news programs?

“Bloggers have very little power,” says Reynolds. “What they have is influence. They have an ability to get ideas noticed that would otherwise be ignored and to shame people”–namely journalists–”into doing their jobs better.”

While I respect Reynolds’ statement on the issue, I don’t think that’s the right tact to take or state as what bloggers really want. While in some cases, “shaming” might be what makes people write about things they wouldn’t have, why create an environment of “us and them.” That’s the last thing, that I, a blogger, want in this situation. I’d prefer symbiotic, if anything. If you’re a blogger, perhaps you get “tips” from readers here and there about stories that they don’t necessarily have the means/ability to research, and they think you might be interested in investigating them. Same deal as how mainstream reporting can work. In that case, reporters and bloggers can share ideas and tips in order to break stories. If bloggers are seen as folks who are only out to shame reporters into covering things differently, then they will have no credibility, and reporters won’t want to have anything to do with them. I’d rather have newspeople be a resource to me, even though I cover them as fodder for this site.

In fact, I attempted to do just that a few weeks ago. I received a tip that that Associated Press was moving its entire Service Desk op out to Spokane. I finally got confirmation late in the day, but must have made fifteen phone calls to various sources who could assist me. I even left two messages with the city desk at the Spokesman-Review. Both calls were left unanswered. Was it not a newsworthy event? Maybe it’s not front page news, but it’s still news. I would have loved to get some help from the city desk or a local reporter in seeing if they’d heard anything specific. Heck, I’d have appreciated just a phone call back saying “We’re not going to report on this. We don’t think it’s a big enough story.” Will there be a day when a blogger make the same call and be taken more seriously?

Related: Steve Rubel posts about an eWeek article about how blogging is “killing journalism as we know it.”