Thursday, December 14, 2006
It's about time
The Media Bloggers Association is about to unveil new membership policies designed to help bloggers who see themselves more as journalists than free-form diarists. Members would also have to adopt formal editorial and corrections policies and take an online course offered by the Poynter Institute that covers legal issues related to blogging (AP).
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2 comments:
Ash, thanks for the link. I like the site. Now for the rant...
If only journalists held other journalists to the same standards they seem determined to hold bloggers.
I get that the Media Institute is trying to promote and legitimize blogging, but I don't think we get there by pretending that the corporate media has got it figured out. The state of the corporate media is more troublesome than the state of the blogosphere, IMHO. Too cozy with the politicians, too scared of offending, too convinced that, because they're criticized by both ends of the political spectrum, they're centrist.
I'd like to see some journalistic soul-searching rather than elitist tut-tutting of the blogosphere. The blogosphere is a self-correcting system while the monolithic corporate media has been able to peddle whatever it likes without accountability. Of course now the readership is flagging quite a bit. Why? Because of internet news sources, including blogs.
I could go on and on, but that might start some kind of flame war... 8-)
Blogging and reporting are very different things. I see blogging as a nice compliment to reporting, but I doubt it will ever completely take over. On a blog, you can post whatever you want. Newspapers and other organized media have more to lose than a blogger, and thus are more likely to closely examine an issue before reporting it. Personally, I like the idea of a somewhat strict media bloggers code - speaking of that, will a member please nominate me? :)
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