Give me a blog and I’ll give you the news

If the 20^th century was the professionalization of journalism, then the 21^st century will be the re-emergence of the amateur eyewitness. These prophetic words are playing themselves out right now as mass media moves away from the professional and closer to the amateur. This move is happening for several reasons, and is best represented by Josh Benton’s “Curve of Journalistic Interestingness.”

           

The Curve details how “eyewitness reporting rendered in real time via the blog represents an interesting and worthy kissing cousin to long-form narrative journalism.” (Clark, “From Blog to Narrative”) Instead of the “boring” conventional journalism methods and approach to reporting the news, close-up, interactive, lively reporting helps make the unfamiliar more familiar to readers.

 

Benton’s use for blogs is exactly where journalism needs to go. Instead of just waiting for the New York Times to post in red their most current update to a story, people who are at the event or participating in the event will provide the news. Benton believes that getting the thoughts onto the computer and immediately sent to all corners of the blogosphere is more important than traditional journalists spending up to 24 hours analyzing data and creating what would be then stale stories.

 

Another aspect of Benton’s ideas about blogging being interesting coincides with video blogging. Since practically everyone has a camera in their cell phone, the immediacy of video footage to reach the Web is almost instantaneous now. And with youtube, amateur bloggers/journalists can upload that video footage from the phone.

 

I think Benton’s ideas here are fascinating, but I feel that investigative journalism by amateurs is lacking due to youtube’s agreement with the government not to show real-time death, rapes, or military operations in Iraq. If a policeman shoots an innocent man and a Samaritan catches it on tape, good luck finding a Web site that will show it. We still have limits to how much we can see online – “Videodrome” hasn’t come to fruition yet.

 

Discussion questions:

1. Why does Benton think we should look to non-traditional journalists for news and not the traditional media?
2. How could blogs be a detractor from conventional, truthful, respected traditional media? In other words, if blogs are even more immediate than a daily newspaper or Web site, how could a move away from professional journalists to amateurs with no school or training be an issue, especially in relation to media law/media ethics?