Every once in a while I figure something out that I’m sure is obvious to a lot of others. Today’s insight:
Yeah, there are few individual blogs that rise to the level of good newspaper journalism, but in the aggregate, they can compete favourably with, or at very least augment, “professional” journalism.
For every subject area out there, there are a significant number of bloggers, including dedicated amateurs, professionals, Very Smart People and “guys in pyjamas.” And they’re linked and, through RSS and aggregators, we’re linked in. In the time it takes to track down and read one in-depth newspaper article in a subject I’m interested in, I can read half-a-dozen blog posts that report, expand, argue, correct and synthesize. In some well-developed areas — technology comes to mind — newspapers can’t effectively compete.
Failure to recognize the aggregate power of blogs is, I think, as big a mistake as setting the debate as blogger vs. journalist.
Tags: aggregation, blogs, journalism
