From today I’ll be blogging parts of a book chapter on ‘Blogs and Investigative Journalism’ which will form part of the next edition of ‘Investigative Journalism‘. The following is the first part, which introduces blogging in general and its relationship with journalism. I would welcome any corrections, extra information or comments.
Blogging and journalism
To ask “Is blogging journalism” is to mistake form for content. Blogs – like websites, paper, television or radio – can contain journalism, but may not. They are a platform, albeit – like other media platforms – one with certain generic conventions. Like all conventions, these have advantages and disadvantages for journalism, which this chapter aims to address.
As a platform, blogs are a type of website built (normally) using content management software to a template where entries are dated and arranged with the most recent entry uppermost. Despite their extraordinary range and number, the technology and history of blogs has lent the medium some generic qualities. These include: a most-recent-post-top structure, a ‘blogroll’ of related sites, an often personal or subjective writing style, brevity, and – related to brevity – a tendency to link to any source mentioned (which the user can click to find out more).
When they first began to spread in the late 1990s, blogs tended to be lists of links to similar sites (this ‘blogroll’ element still remains in many blog systems and templates today). Blog posts, meanwhile, often hinged around a single link, where:
“An editor with some expertise in a field might demonstrate the accuracy or inaccuracy of a highlighted article or certain facts therein; provide additional facts he feels are pertinent to the issue at hand; or simply add an opinion or differing viewpoint from the one in the piece he has linked. Typically this commentary is characterized by an irreverent, sometimes sarcastic tone. More skillful editors manage to convey all of these things in the sentence or two with which they introduce the link … Their sarcasm and fearless commentary reminds us to question the vested interests of our sources of information and the expertise of individual reporters as they file news stories about subjects they may not fully understand” (Blood, 2000)
Although the first blogs were programmed by their authors, it was the launch of free content management systems such as Pitas, Blogger and Groksoup (all in 1999) which facilitated an explosion in blogger numbers as the barriers to entry were lowered to those without HTML coding skills. Rebecca Blood (2000) argues that this change, and Blogger’s interface and culture in particular, resulted in a change in the medium itself, in favour of more diary-like blogs, with accompanying cults of personality. It was during this time that blogs received much of their initial exposure in the mainstream media.
The years since, however, have seen a number of supplementary technologies develop that have brought the blog further into the orbit of journalistic enterprises. One is the rise of RSS as a distribution method. RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) – now routinely included in blog services such as Blogger and WordPress – is a technology which allows readers to subscribe to a blog through an ‘RSS reader’. This removes the requirement for readers to check the blog itself for any new postings, and means they can instead include the blog feed as one among a number to form their personal news service. It also means feeds can be aggregated by publishers or journalists.
A second factor is the rise of linkbacks (also known as trackbacks, refbacks or pingbacks). These ‘ping’ a blogger to notify them when another blogger has linked to their post, while a brief extract of the referring website and a link is often included as part of the comments on a particular post, enabling the blogger to address any response or debate, as well as allowing readers to follow disussion that took place on other blogs after the original post was written. This combination of reverse referencing and notification adds to blogging’s conversational nature, making bloggers aware of their readers’ identities and opinions, and allowing them to correct errors or clarify and refine arguments. Notably, articles which are not written on a platform using trackback technology – i.e. most traditional news websites – do not get included in this discussion.
Thirdly, because of the tendency for blogs to link frequently, and because of the importance of incoming links to a webpage’s ranking on search engines such as Google, blogs have become a major factor in the profile of particular stories. A story that is heavily blogged benefits from a high visibility on search engines – particularly blog-specific search engines which monitor popular terms and sites. Economically, the advent of services such as AdSense and BlogAds meant some journalistic bloggers who began as amateurs were able to commercialise their operations and employ full time staff, as popular blogs such as Boing Boing and the Daily Kos enjoyed visitor numbers higher than most mainstream news organisations.
Perhaps partly as a result of the significance of blogs to search engine ranking – and therefore readers and online advertising revenue – and partly because of the threat that blogs pose in taking away their audiences, the blog format has been increasingly adopted by news organisations, who have either coopted the technology for their own journalists, employed bloggers on their staff, or teamed up with blogging and citizen journalism operations (Gant, 2007). With this shift into the mainstream media, the preexisting generic qualities of blogs have, in many cases, been diluted, with some journalists writing blog entries in the same way as a column, disabling comments or linkbacks, or failing to link to their sources. The blog, in these cases, simply becomes a new platform for traditional print content – or, put another way, ‘shovelware’. In other cases, however, “They are now achieving what Gans called for in an ‘indirect sharing of responsibilities’ with journalists [and] represent the multi-perspectival news that will end up setting more and different agendas as desired by Gans” (Robinson, 2006: 80).
Part two of this chapter – The Amateur-Professional Debate – is here.
Have I missed something? Included an error? If you want to make changes directly, this section is available as a wiki at http://blogsinvestigativejournalism.pbwiki.com/blogsandjournalism. Click on ‘Edit page’ and log on with the password ‘bij‘.
[...] 24, 2007 In the second part of my book chapter I look at the criticisms leveled at both bloggers and professional journalists. I would welcome any [...]
Paul,
Interesting read, and generally on the mark. Want to take issue with a few things you say, though…
1) I think you’re far too dismissive of mainstream media blogs. Most of the criticisms you point out are technological issues as well as philosophical ones. Trackbacks, links, comments — these are all fairly standard components now,even for newspaper blogs, and I suspect over time they will be adopted by just about everyone. One of the reasons we specifically are a bit behind in this regard is technology: Integrating WordPress into a website is a huge task, far bigger than you might realize. How do you treat blog posts relative to stories for search, for example? How do you organize blog posts and stories on a page? How do you handle blog posts for archiving purposes? What about corrections, and various versions of a blog post? Should those all just go up in smoke, or should they be preserved somehow? It’s a large undertaking with lots of moving parts. Over time, I think, technologically speaking, there will be fewer and fewer differences between “us” and “them.” Comments are probably the one area of concern for most news organizations, and I think legitimately so. Moderation is incredibly time consuming and expensive, and leaving comments open to the world is equally fraught with issues. I’m not sure anyone has a good solution to this, but most news organizations I can think of have adopted either moderated or open comments.
2) I also think you’re right that, right now, most newspaper blogs are kind of milquetoast, but that’s not true of all of them. Check out The Fix at the Washington Post. It’s flat-out one of the best politics blogs anywhere. But if you’re expectation is that news blogs should suddenly adopt the standards and persona of someone like, say, Kos, it isn’t going to happen. And I happen to think there is a middle ground there, a niche to be filled. The Fix is one example of a journalism-focused blog that is fun, readable and informative. Our humble attempts have been relatively successful. The David Carr blog during Oscar season is hugely popular. Our soccer blog, believe it or not, is doing gangbuster traffic. And even our politics blog is doing really, really well, despite the somewhat Timesian tone. So, I guess I would say, let the users decide. If our blogs don’t fit your ideal of a “true” blog then I guess we’ll have to find some other buzzword. Personally, I think there’s plenty of room for blogs that deal in opinion as well as those that deal in straight news reporting, or that focus on a a niche audience — and again, in the blogging world, you’ll find both.
3) On the amateur-professional debate, I’m hard-pressed to disagree with anything you say here in terms of the big picture. I’m not sure I agree with the contrast you’re drawing between commercial news and noncommercial blogs. I’m not sure you could point out a single blog that does real journalism of any substance or depth that isn’t also a commercial entity. The real advantage the blogger has is the ability to scale and low overhead. Attract enough readers and advertisers, and it’s possible you could run a serious news organization strictly as an online-only entity. There are folks attempting to do just that, but the results are pretty mixed so far. TPMmuckracker has had a couple of minor scoops. If pressed, I could think of a few more probably. Furthermore, this is probably the niche that most news organization will attempt to fill, if and when they/we get a clue about the web. Over time, I could see a number of the bigger news organizations shifting more and more of their original news-gathering resources to the online side.
Anyway, good read.
aron
Thanks for a hugely useful piece of feedback. I’ll try to reflect on that and amend accordingly.
As to the case studies, the rest of the chapter draws on a range, so it will be interesting to see what you think of those.
[...] 26, 2007 The third part of this draft book chapter (read part one here and part two here) looks at how blogs have changed the sourcing practices of journalists – in [...]
[...] transparency, potential permanence over time, limitless space, and digital distribution systems (part one is here; part two here; part three here) . I would welcome any corrections, extra information or [...]
[...] Blogging and Journalism Explores the relationship of blogging to journalism. [...]
[...] informação extra ou comentários são bem-vindos. [This is a Portuguese translation of Blogs and Investigative Journalism part one. Thanks to Gabriela [...]
Hi,
Its a interesting and informative post.You brings out clearly about similarities and differences between Blogging and journalism.Ofcourse rise of linkbacks or trackbacks, refbacks or pingbacks ‘ping’ a blogger to notify them when another blogger has linked to their post.Good explanations!
[...] 26, 2007 Following my research into investigative journalism I’ve been thinking about its future. One path clearly lies in tools of crowdsourcing and [...]
[...] kind of debate is fruitless, as it confuses form with content. Blogs have developed to become a publishing platform, just like television or radio. The content [...]
[...] Blogs have developed to become a publishing platform, just like television or radio. The content may or may not be journalism. We should not confuse form with content. [...]
[...] include the official launch of the second edition of the book Investigative Journalism, for which I’ve written a chapter on ‘Investigative Journalism and Blogs‘. I’ll be on a panel discussing “What is the point of investigative journalism in [...]
[...] include the official launch of the second edition of the book Investigative Journalism, for which I’ve written a chapter on ‘Investigative Journalism and Blogs‘. I’ll be on a panel discussing “GLOBAL OPERATIONS Sourcing Globally, Reporting [...]
[...] amigo Paul Bradshaw fala sobre isso no capítulo de um livro sobre jornalismo investigativo a ser lançado em [...]
[...] Blogs and Investigative Journalism: draft first section « Online Journalism Blog (tags: Blogging journalism) [...]
[...] http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2007/10/24/blogs-and-investigative-journalism-draft-first-section/ [...]
[...] Blogging as a journalistic device is still in its early days. In fact, blogging in journalism is one of those topics that can provoke strong emotions. Usually critics of blogs are quick to proclaim that blogging isn’t journalism. This kind of debate is fruitless, as it confuses form with content. [...]
[...] examples of this phenomenon were identified while researching a book chapter on investigative journalism and blogs (De Burgh, 2008). The first was an experiment by The Florida News Press: when it started receiving [...]