Blogs were going to change the world, remember? (#SFWApro)

Writing earlier this week about “entrepo-journalism” got me thinking about a decade ago, when journalism was supposedly transformed by the power of blogging.
Professional reporting, according to several articles and columns on the topic, was bogged down with bureaucracy, with editors and publishers who controlled what was put in the paper, with being tied to a daily or weekly publication schedule (conservatives usually threw in that bloggers were free of the political correctness that supposedly smothered the mainstream media). Bloggers were nimble, able to post anywhere, anytime, unfettered by requiring approval. During the Iraq War, Kathleen Parker discussed with awe how a blogger for National Review was turning out pieces day and night, without regard for when the magazine’s next issue was coming out.
What was missing from all this was, of course, that most political bloggers aren’t reporters, they’re pundits. 99 percent of people blogging about the Iraq war were blogging about news someone else had reported, commenting on it, not adding any new data.
Obviously I don’t think that’s a bad thing or I wouldn’t do it. But it ain’t reporting, any more than taking photographs by itself is photojournalism.
Don’t get me wrong, some bloggers did (and do) serious reporting, including bloggers who weren’t part of any news organization. And blogging is sometimes a great tool for reporting: I liveblogged city council meetings for a couple of years, and it adds a lot of texture to the event that can’t get into print (details that are interesting when blogged as they happen are damn dull when recapped the next day, trust me).
But most blogging isn’t reporting. And enough bullshit crops up on blogs to make me appreciate editors going over stories and working for organizations that value accuracy.
And of course, contrary to predictions, blogging did not sweep the newspapers of the world away. While newspapers are in decline, it’s not because anyone came up with a superior method of reporting. Blogs themselves have faded from those days as the social aspect of blogging has been taken over by Twitter, FaceBook and so forth. And a lot of blogs are, in fact, coming out of the media institutions blogging was going to topple.
Journalism has changed a lot in the past 20 years or so, and those changes haven’t worked well for professionals. Fewer jobs, tighter budgets, etc., etc. So the fixation on discovering something that will either make the whole industry collapse or show the way to a new exciting career world isn’t surprising. To date, however, it hasn’t been accurate.