Local News Blogs: ‘No Journalistic Value’

by Matt on Aug 11, 2009 in Industry

Following up on yesterday’s post, here’s an example of hyperlocal bloggers not getting any respect at all. It comes from a BBC radio program called The Media Show, where last week’s discussion was about the future of journalism. After talking about the possible closing of The Observer newspaper, one of the segments covered citizen journalism. Here’s how the host introduced it:

“Now, people – bloggers and the like – doing things for nothing on the internet, untrained and unsupervised. Sounds like the very opposite of paid-for professional journalism, and indeed that’s precisely what many in the traditional world of newspaper journalism think it is. Not necessarily a bad thing, but of no real journalistic value. Are they right?”

Now, granted, that’s not the host’s opinion — but he is restating what many in the news media (print, especially) think about hyperlocal news bloggers. Jeff Jarvis does a fine job adding legitimacy to local blogs and citizen journalism, and mentions that it can be a legitimate business model:

“We have found hyperlocal bloggers who are bringing in between $100,000 and $200,000 per year.”

The whole program lasts about a half-hour. The material I’m citing here starts at about the 22:00 mark, and lasts about six minutes. You can listen here, but this audio may not be available after today. (Some BBC programs only leave audio online for a week, and the show aired last Wednesday.

(found via the HMI blog)

You might also like:

  1. Sacramento Bee & Local Blogs: “Win-Win”
  2. My Local Paper Disrespects Local Bloggers


August 11, 2009 | Filed Under Industry 

Comments

3 Responses to “Local News Blogs: ‘No Journalistic Value’”

  1. What is hyperlocal blogging? on August 11th, 2009 10:35 am

    [...] bloggers making $100,000 – $200,000 per year” according to Jeff Jarvis in “Local News Blogs:  “No Journalistic Value” from Hyperlocal [...]

  2. Seattle Takes the Lead on Hyperlocal Journalism : HyperlocalBlogger on August 28th, 2009 10:35 pm

    [...] quite a change from the “local blogs have no journalistic value” attitude and the lack of respect that even the Washington state legislature has shown toward [...]

  3. Richard Cloyd on August 31st, 2009 8:40 pm

    I smell radical change in the air……

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