Local Bloggers are Getting No Respect
by Matt on Apr 13, 2009 in Industry
One thing I didn’t mention (purposely) in last night’s post about the NY Times article was the inclusion of a little jab directed at bloggers in general, and local bloggers specifically. You may have caught it near the end of the article:
One hurdle is the need for reliable, quality content. The information on many of these sites can still appear woefully incomplete. Crime reports on EveryBlock, for example, are short on details of what happened. Links to professionally written news articles on Outside.in are mixed with trivial and sometimes irrelevant blog posts.
That raises the question of what these hyperlocal sites will do if newspapers, a main source of credible information, go out of business. “They rely on pulling data from other sources, so they really can’t function if news organizations disappear,” said Steve Outing, who writes about online media for Editor & Publisher Online.
Inherent in those two paragraphs is this idea that there’s some kind of separation between so-called “professionally written news” and what local news blogs are doing. The Times writer, in the first paragraph, mentions that these are “trivial and sometimes irrelevant blog posts.”
This Just In: Professionally written news articles are also sometimes trivial and irrelevant. This isn’t just a blogging thing. But that’s an attitude that continues to thrive in some traditional media circles.
The JTA, a Jewish news organization, got itself in some hot water recently for sending out a fundraising letter that said this:
“Without a strong JTA, the storytelling will be left to bloggers, twitterers and non-professionals. Is this the best way for our future Jewish stories to be told and recorded?”
Yikes. That comment led to all kinds of backlash among Jewish bloggers and eventually led to an apology from the JTA. You can read more about the controversy at Forward.com.
All of this is to be expected to some degree. Local blogging is still in its infancy, despite the success of the big local blog networks (like Gothamist). And with traditional media on the decline, it’s natural that they’ll take potshots at one of the news sources that stands to replace them. But just because it’s expected, doesn’t make it okay. Local news bloggers need to stand up and show that they deserve respect as legitimate sources of local information.
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12 Responses to “Local Bloggers are Getting No Respect”
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I just do not understand the falderol surrounding the “extinction” of “journalism.” Bloggers absolutely do just as good a job, and oftentimes a BETTER job, than traditional journalists. These kinds of arguments strike me as nothing more than a dying industry unsuccessfully trying to stem the tide of its own demise.
“…the storytelling will be left to bloggers, twitterers and non-professionals. Is this the best way for our future Jewish stories to be told and recorded?””
Heck yes, it is the best way!!!
I’m giving out +10 points to David for using the word “falderol” in a blog comment. Love it.
Unfortunately this tactic isn’t new, but it’s a tell tale sign of a bitter reporter grasping at straws to justify their existence. Most of these folks will be out of a job soon because bloggers are doing their work better than they are and rather than step up a lot of these guys resort to petty shots like this to make themselves feel better.
Laughable. As a hyperlocal blogger I break stories that the local newspaper then calls me about and later runs stories on. They’re so clueless they need to use my site as their barometer of what is important to the local community. If the local newspaper closes it would have no effect on my site at all.
Please note that my quote in that article was taken out of context by the NYT reporter, and does not represent my thinking. My response is in the article’s comment thread.
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Sean, Brian, Steve – thanks for joining the conversation. Appreciate it.
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