Blogging Changing Journalism

A small number of my students noted in their end-of-term reflection that they weren't all that comfortable with blogging because they expected a course in traditional journalism, not all this cyberspace stuff. While I hope there will always be a good selection of courses for students who are interested in gaining practice in traditional forms of writing, articles like this one underscore my own interest in exposing my students to the dominant forces shaping the profession of journalism -- and the savvy journalists have been aware of the power of weblogs for longer than the educators/composition theorists (who, sadly, as a group tend to be a little slow to adapt to technological change).

USATODAY.com - Freewheeling 'bloggers' are rewriting rules of journalism

They call themselves bloggers. Their mission: to remake political journalism and, quite possibly, democracy itself. The plan: to run an end around big media by becoming publishers on the Internet.

I'm not too surprised that an article in the "politics" section of the paper presents weblogs as if they are all political soap boxes. We've had our share of political postings on this site, but I think that newspaper articles like this, which condition non-bloggers to expect that all bloggers are blogging for political reasons, is part of why some people snort derisively when they come across blogs that are more social/personal in nature. (Andrew Orlowksi is perhaps the best example of a professional writer who scoffs at blogs because, according to his distortion of a ficture quoted at an academic conference, most bloggers are teenage girls.)

(See some responses to Orlowski's article.)