The blurred lines between blogging and journalism

I have been thinking a lot lately about the roles of bloggers and journalists and how they can often become blurred. Both with bloggers that end up writing for publishers (Pete Cashmore now writes a weekly column for CNN) and the journalists that maintain personal blogs. Then I happened across this interesting article that outlines a new project by the Guardian newspaper, who have created a whole new hybrid – Beat Bloggers.

The hybrid

The Guardian project is interesting because it’s created a whole new type of journalism, that essentially maintains the style of blogging. The beat bloggers are placed in 3 cities – Cardiff, Leeds and Edinburgh. It’s an exciting project that attracted a large amount of applications and online buzz. By reaching out to bloggers in their local cities, the Guardian has given itself access to a powerful news source and it’s encouraging that they have actually gone out and titled these writers as ‘bloggers’ and not just employed them as a columnist. They’ve given a mainstream outlet to bloggers, but can they still really be called bloggers in their Guardian roles? In reality there is nothing that would differentiate their articles from others on the site, but maybe it doesn’t matter.

The lines are increasingly blurring between blogging and journalism. Not only in the fact that many bloggers now contribute to, or work full time in, traditional publications, but also in how blogs now present themselves. Major tech blogs such as The Next Web have had facelifts that give them the appearance more of an online newspaper than a blog. The widget system splits news up into separate sections and takes it away from the interface of a blog that we’re familiar with. Indeed, many people are reading blogs now and they don’t even realise it.

What makes someone a blogger and not a journalist? Is the only differentiator we have left whether or not the site also has a printed publication? That’s easy to understand, black and white, printed words.  But in reality it’s not that simple. Techcrunch describes itself as a weblog, but it has editors, contributors and authors. Why aren’t these contributors calling themselves journalists, or when do they start to? The style in these huge collaborative blogs may be more personalised than you would find in a traditional publication, but ultimately just as informed, just as reliable and just as quick to break the news. Where’s the tipping point?

The fact is that while it’s getting increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the two, the war still rages. Many bloggers see journalists as behind the times and scared of the power of blogging, and many journalists have often been fairly vocal of their views of bloggers as lacking credibility and ethics. Neither, of course, is right. The fact that the two practices are moving closer together might explain the discomfort that’s often felt. Many bloggers now contribute to major publications and a lot of journalists maintain personal blogs, for example Jemima Kiss. The dictionary definitions aren’t going to cut it any more. There aren’t many bloggers who would describe their site as a shared online journal. It’s become more than that. And the idea that journalists write for a mass market won’t do us much good either, if you look at The Huffington Post, which reaches over 12.5 million unique visitors, yet calls itself a blog.

We are all publishers

The answer may lie in the assertion by Tom Foremski, formerly a journalist for the financial times, that social media is actually about publishing. We are all content creators when we upload a photo, record a video or write a blog post. This could herald the way towards a new line of thinking, and an ultimately refreshing one. It’s not about whether you are a journalist or a blogger, the title doesn’t matter. It is actually about the quality of the content you are producing and sharing. It’s the substance that matters, not the title of the person that wrote it. And if they’re getting paid for what they write as well – then good on them for making a living out of it.

In 10 years time it will be interesting to see if we still use the term ‘blogger’ as we do today, or if it will no longer be relevant. Or there may well be some third level, where you are not quite a blogger but not a journalist either. Who knows? Maybe we will all just be publishers, or writers. A more non-descript term that puts us on an equal footing whether we’re reaching 10 people a day or 10,000.