N&O Dome: political news in the blogosphere
Old media grumps who want to banish blogs from “real journalism” would do well to read the N&O’s Under the Dome Blog on a regular basis. It’s part blog, all journalism and it may well represent the future of political reporting.
Dome’s recent series detailing spending proposed by all statewide candidates is an example of how blogs can provide credible and useful information for voters. Spending proposed by candidates is information that previously would have been ignored–or woven into regular articles. The Dome series lays it out in a way that is easy to understand and allows voters to compare candidates.
Dome’s blogger, Ryan Teague Beckwith, recently responded to a Q&A with TalkPolitics:
Q. Are journalists reluctant to attribute ideas and stories to bloggers? If so, why?
A. “As a professional journalist, I’m a little leery of linking to just any blog. I have a stable of blogs on North Carolina politics that I read regularly and I frequently link to them on Under the Dome, but I am careful about blogs I am not familiar with. I would rather be a little behind the curve on an item bouncing around the blogosphere than link to something that turns out not to be true, because people will give the item more credibility if they read it on the N&O site.”
Q. Can a person be a) a blogger, b) a partisan and also c) a journalist?
A. “I have no problem with partisan journalists as long as they cite their sources and play by the rules. A lot of good journalism comes out of newspapers, magazines and blogs that strongly present a point of view. I’m not sure it does much good to go around saying who is and isn’t a journalist. That said, I strongly believe in nonpartisan journalism and strive to be objective in my reporting. I think that we’re all part of a journalistic ecosystem, and like any other environment, diversity is a strength.”
Q. Where do you believe this blending of blogging and journalism is headed? Will journalistic norms be reshaped?
A. “As a paid blogger for an MSM paper, I think convergence is already happening. (As William Gibson famously said, the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.) Over time, I think papers will learn to be more immediate, more chatty and more transparent, while bloggers will learn to be more rigorously sourced, more fair and more objective.
“You hear a lot these days about how newspapers are lumbering dinosaurs about to go extinct. That may or may not be true. Certainly, the model of a monopolistic local print media reliant on classifieds and department store ads is past the sell-by date. But I don’t think that the end of newspapers means the end of journalism.
“Any student of biology can tell you that the dinosaurs didn’t disappear, they evolved. Their descendants are the birds we encounter every day. They are nimble, require fewer resources and can do things that dinosaurs only dreamed about. Oh, and there are millions of them.” Posted by Leroy Towns