Bloggers Vs Journalists
David Warsh thinks the key difference between a blogger and a journalist is that journalists are able to remain independent. And bloggers are not:
Most bloggers make their living working for somebody else – a company, a political party, a think tank, a military unit, a religious community, a university, a profession. Their ultimate loyalties are likely to be to their day job, and their career. There may be many sacred cows for them, or relatively few, but there certainly will be some, and it won’t matter to them very much.
I think that difference is pretty lame and ultimately not terribly revealing. If anything, I’d suggest that some if not most bloggers are relatively more free than journalists. For better or worse they’re not bound by the same norms, ethical guidelines, editors, or publishers that might guide a traditional journalist.
What makes Warsh different in my book is that he was socialized under the dead tree journalism regime, but since 2002 has embraced the freedom of the internet with his blog: posting regularly, linking to others, giving away most of his writing for free (with a full content RSS feed for a while now too). But his personal development doesn’t suggest that other writers haven’t or can’t adopt traditional journalistic values while operating these new fangled blog things.
I’ve been reading Warsh since I was in high school. I’d be quite happy if he fully embraced that he’s been blogging since 2002 and doing it better than most who’ve tried their hand at the endeavor.
