I remember when a military reporter from the San Antonio Express-News embedded with our unit in Iraq for a month, and along with his normal stories for the News section of the newspaper and Web site, he also published a blog. He used the blog as an extension for his news reporting – he wrote about his impressions of Iraq: the sights, smells and sounds of war. But he went beyond that, and wrote stories for his blog that wouldn’t be printed in the newspaper. For example, he wrote a story for the front page about two helicopter pilots who were about to turn 60 years old, were best friends and roommates. In his blog, though, he wrote about their experiences in Vietnam, and how they felt about the current war.
I liked his stories, but really loved his blogs. He interviewed my boss about his experiences as a corrections officer for the ADX Florence prison in Colorado, the only federal supermax prison in the United States . My boss was from Texas, but the story had nothing to do with the war or the state – it was about his experiences 20 years ago in Colorado. This was a human interest piece that would still appeal to anyone reading the Internet, since the San Antonio News-Express can be accessed by anyone in the world; but you have to use quite a bit more resources to actually hold one of the newspapers physically in my hand here in Seattle.
He said his blogs garnered him more readers than his news stories, which shows that blogs are making in-roads into traditional news outlets’ business. I now wonder, though, that if he ever left the newspaper and started up his own blog, would he be successful?
The military hasn’t fully accepted bloggers as legitimate media worth being credentialed, so I imagine most reporters still need the newspaper gig to supplement the blog. This is probably a similar thought for many war correspondents, who don’t feel ready to completely pursue blogs as a primary financial endeavor, like Chris Allbritton. (“We The Media,” 155)
Allbritton’s adventures into Iraq unimbedded as a blogger are to be commended, but is very dangerous. Luckily, he stayed in northern Iraq, which has been relatively peaceful during Operation Iraqi Freedom. I fear he would not have been so lucky if he had been lurking around Diyala Province or Haifa Street in Baghdad. Many U.S. reporters feel queasy about embedding with American troops, but its still the safest (and I would argue best) way to cover the war.
Questions:
- Why do bloggers believe they are just as entitled to cover news stories as credentialed reporters from newspapers or television stations?
- What are the pros and cons for trusting a bloggers’ information? Pros and cons for being self-edited, as most bloggers currently are?
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