Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 have a post up, basically saying that every journalist should start a blog. And of course, there’s rebuttals to this stance, which also shows in the post and comments.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with Scott. While journalists have lots to gain from blogging, there’s also the fact that a lot of them suck without an editor bringing out the best.
There, I said it. Self-publising isn’t necessary a good thing, editors save us from crappy grammar and hollow stories in the print world. Editors also tend to miss out on lots of that, proving that it’s not a universal law that print is better than web. But at least it’s another set of eyes on the writer’s piece of work, and that ups the chance of getting rid of errors. I know a lot of journalists, and have edited some, that definitely can’t be left with a Publish button.
Not all journalists should blog, it might end up biting them in the neck. In other words, just the good ones should get into blogging – the rest would do us all a favor by shutting up.
Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 3:32 am
I think it depends on what they are blogging about. I’m a journalist in my day job and a blogger during my free time. I’m blogging about news videography, which is what I do in my day job. I may have grammatical errors sometimes, but I think my readers would forgive them because my blog serves as a resource that helps them become better videographers and stay in touch with news about online video.
However, I think that some newspaper-sponsored blogs where the reporter is blogging about his or her beat are total crap and I’d never read them.
Angela, as long as you’re good at blogging you don’t need an editor. Thing is, there’s a great number or journos that really need an editor. I’ve seen so many poorly structured pieces and crappy grammar, as well as actual holes in the research, when I was working in print. If they start blogging I’ll quit…
Thanks for this site!
hifue.info