Here’s another one for that book I’m working on – I’m trying to think: what have been the most significant events in the history of journalism blogging?

Here’s what I have so far (thanks Mark Jones and Nigel Barlow):

• 1998: The Drudge Report breaks the Monica Lewinsky story. While Drudge denies the site is a blog, it demonstrated how the nimbleness of an online operation could scoop the mainstream media.
• 2001: September 11 attacks: while news websites collapse under the global demand, a network of blogs pass on news and lists of survivors
• 2002: Trent Lott forced to resign after apparently pro-segregationist statements made at an event and initially ignored by mainstream media, were picked up and fleshed out by bloggers
• 2003: Invasion of Iraq: Salam Pax, the ‘Baghdad Blogger’, posts updates from the city as it is bombed, providing a particular contrast to war reporters ‘embedded’ with the armed forces and demonstrating the importance of non-journalist bloggers
• 2003: Christopher Allbritton raises $15,000 through his blog Back-to-Iraq 3.0, to send him to report independently from the war, demonstrating the ability of blogs to financially support independent journalism (called the ‘tip-jar model’).
• 2004: Rathergate/Memogate: CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcast a story about George W. Bush’s National Guard service, and within minutes a section of the blogosphere mobilises to discredit the documents on which it is based. Dan Rather eventually resigns as a result.
• 2004: Asian Tsunami: more blogs mobilise around a disaster, of particular significance for video blogging
• 2005: July 7 Bombings, London: mobile phone image of passengers walking along Tube tunnel posted on MoBlog (although was first sent to The Sun), and goes global from there. A significant moment in moblogging.
• 2006: The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service cites the blog run by the New Orleans Times Picayune during Hurricane Katrina. The flexibility of blogs during a disaster which stopped printing presses and delivery trucks was driven home (h/t Bob Stepno).
• 2007: Talking Points Memo blog breaks story of US attorneys being fired across the country, demonstrating the power of involving readers in an investigation, and carrying it out in public (h/t Albert in the comments).
• 2007: Dave Winer wins his $2,000 bet (made in 2002) that blogs will rank higher than the New York Times for the top 5 news stories of 2007 (h/t Bob Stepno), demonstrating the importance of blogging in news distribution.
• 2007: Myanmar protests: the clampdown that followed democratic protests in the country was seen around the world thanks to blogging, moblogging, and social networking sites. Journalists were not allowed in the country. Even after the government cut off the internet, bloggers located outside the country continued to post material. (h/t Sandra Fish in comments)
• 2008: Peter Hain resigns over donations revealed by UK political blogger Guido Fawkes, who in 2006 broke a story on an affair by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott which he claimed lobby correspondents were sitting on
• 2008: Chinese Earthquake: a key moment for microblogging, as news of the earthquake spreads on Twitter (and Chinese IM service QQ) quicker than any official channels.
• 2008: Collapse of Northern Rock: BBC correspondent Robert Peston breaks one of the biggest stories of the year – not on TV, but on his blog.

What have I missed? This is a horribly Anglo-American list, too, so I’d particularly welcome similar moments from other countries.

Part four of this draft book chapter looks at how blogs have changed the publishing of journalism through its possibilities for 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 comments.

Publishing

Traditionally, news has always been subject to the pressures of time and space. Today’s news is tomorrow’s proverbial ‘fish and chip paper’ – news is required to be ‘new’; stories “have a 24 hour audition on the news stage, and if they don’t catch fire in that 24 hours, there’s no second chance” (Rosen, 2004). At the same time, part of the craft of journalism in the 20th century has been the ability to distil a complex story into a particular word count or time slot, while a talent of editors is their judgement in allocating space based on the pressures of the day’s competing stories.

In the 21st century, however, new media technologies have begun to challenge the limitations of time and space that defined the news media in the 20th.

The internet provides a potentially infinite space for journalists to publish not only edited articles, but also raw material, while hyperlinks offer the potential to provide important context and background. When David Leigh and Rob Evans decided to investigate allegations of corruption in the arms trade in 2003, for example, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger suggested they think beyond a traditional book and create a website. The result, a broad and deep exploration of the allegations, the details and the figures involved, includes recent news on the investigation’s progress; a 10-part investigation into Britain’s arms trade; biographies and details on 40 people and how they are relevant to BAE payments; an interactive “global investigations map”; profiles of BAE’s weapons and planes and the company itself; photocopies of the main evidential documents; and video interviews with key figures. Leigh says that the website meant “We were able to lay everything out with no constraints of space and say ‘OK guys, here’s all the evidence’” while the website has allowed the two journalists to publish memos, faxes, emails and research passed on to them by other journalists and authors working on the story (Smith, 2007).

The ‘public draft’ possibilities of blogs can offer a more transparent way of working for journalists. At a time when public trust of journalists is low, the transparency of blogs offers a way to rebuild that trust, while Singer (Friend & Singer, 2007) notes the need for transparency as an ethical principle, allowing audiences to judge the validity of information, the process by which it was secured, and the motives and biases of the journalist providing it. Other theorists point to a need to narrow the widening gap between citizens and journalists (Gans, 2003), or to reappropriate the private discussion sphere that has been hijacked by the mass media in a way that excludes the public (Habermas 1989). “By widening the disclosure circle through information sharing,” writes Paul Andrews (2003) “blogs have contributed to the truth-finding process.”

In another example, during the case of the trial of former high-ranking Bush official Lewis “Scooter” Libby readers of the blog Firedoglake funded a team of people to ‘live blog’ the trial as it took place. The result was a transcript of what was said – too extensive for publication in print, but a resource which became essential for journalists covering the trial, and for anyone interested in reading the detail (Rosen, 2007).

In terms of raw material, The Center for Public Integrity has used databases to create a searchable website on details of government contracts awarded for post-Hurricane cleanup and reconstruction (Center for Public Integrity, 2007), while Wikileaks launched in 2007 as an attempt to use wiki technology to provide an “uncensorable system for safe mass document leaking and public analysis”. Within a year it claimed to have received over 1.2 million documents from “dissident communities and anonymous sources” (Wikileaks, 2007), while its first big story was a report on looting by ex-president Moi of Kenya — although the story has been challenged and the site ‘s sources of funding have been questioned (Norton, 2007). It has also been described as “a dumping ground for anyone to place documents that they want to see made public” with doubts raised about the security of the website:

“If a security hole is found in [the anonymity toolset] in a year’s time then it is now distinctly possible that the authorities will be able to go back through their data records and unpick the handshaking and message-passing that currently obscures the trail, and if that happens it would be very dangerous. The fact is that asking people to risk their liberty or even their lives by using software that inevitably has security flaws in it is a reckless and unjustifiable risk, one that is being taken by the posters, not the people writing the code.”(Thompson, B, 2007)

The permanence of material online over is equally significant. In perhaps the most famous example, a barely-reported speech by senator Trent Lott was picked up by bloggers and built momentum as more and more posters added detail, finding evidence of previous statements in favour of racial segregation, and expressing indignation that it had gone unreported, until it was picked up by the mainstream press.

For Rob Evans, meanwhile, it didn’t matter where the BAE story went in the paper, as long as it went online and reached a global audience. “It’s taking a very long-term view, which editors don’t normally take: you put something out there and 18 months later it will suddenly click.” (Smith, 2007).

Finally, new media technologies facilitate new forms and spheres of distribution – instantaneous, and global. RSS allows for instant and replicated distribution; reports can be ‘mirrored’ – copied and published elsewhere – to avoid being censored; and email, mailing lists and social networking services allow stories to be quickly passed on. As a result, sites like YouTube have been used in Iran to denounce state brutality, and in Zimbabwe to expose civil rights violations; and while many countries have attempted to block specific content or social networking sites in general, including Turkey and Thailand (YouTube), the United Arab Emirates, China and Iran (Flickr), users continue to find ways around this censorship, including using proxy sites and building browser extensions (Woodard Maderazo, 2007).

For Vaughan Smith, distribution technologies like Twitter allow him to update a dedicated audience, while postings on his blog are picked up by others (Tomlin, 2007), while in the example of the BAE investigation, despite being published by a British newspaper the story is now followed by journalists in dozens of countries. Leigh and Evans say they openly welcome help from journalists around the world and give it freely to anyone willing to take the story on. “We’re trying to think our way towards a new kind of journalism … The thing is, all the criminals are global now, the police forces are gradually starting to go global and now the journalists are global as well. We need to catch up.” (Smith, 2007)

Read the next part – on fundraising – here.