It may seem like an odd question to ask… on a blog. But, then again, we didn’t really ask it. Let me explain…

One frequent reaction to our recent blog usability study, was that it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter whether or not people “know” they are on a blog when they are on one. A variation on this question was answered in an earlier post, but the general thrust of the issue is that it may actually be important to some people to know if they are on a blog because they bring a different set of assumptions and expectations to blog content. I suppose that this is debatable — and has probably been furiously debated since blogs hit the big time. But I seem to keep running into more instances of this question. So I thought I’d share.

I first ran across this admittedly defensive quote regarding blogs and mainstream media on Susan Mernit’s blog. The speaker is Bill Keller, Executive Editor at the New York Times, and the quote is pulled from this USA Today article (via Corante).

“We’ve only got two things that distinguish us from blogs,” Keller says. “One is we have reporting staffs who actually go out and see stuff and are trained professionals. And we have standards which are enforced by editors — you double-check things, make sure it’s right — and all that costs money. If you aren’t giving people the basics — good reliable news, smart analysis and in-depth investigations — then all they’re going to see is the same stuff they can get on cable TV.”

So, is Keller wrong about this? Susan definitely thinks so. But isn’t it fair to draw a distinction between “citizen journalism” and “professional” journalism (for lack of a better word)? Does drawing this distinction negate or devalue blogs or insult bloggers? I don’t think it does. Bloggers represent a great counterbalance to mainstream news and can certainly provide firsthand, non-professional perspectives on events and issues that are a LOT more interesting than anything a “trained” reporter would come up with. But even as people are intrigued by all these new voices, they seem to have picked up on the fact that the ease of publishing and distributing blogs calls for a slightly higher level of skepticism on the part of the reader. At least our study suggested that…

All this got me thinking about whether or not bloggers may one day be expected to provide a level of corroboration and fact-checking similar to what is typical practice for a national news outlet. Then I saw this snippet in a recent Robert Scoble post.

It’s interesting that many bloggers (both pro and amateur) have been giving me crud the past week or two for “being fast to publish” and “not calling sources to check on my reporting” but that the Register, a professional journalism outlet (they get paid for journalism, I do not) apparently didn’t call our development teams to check into this report and get their side of the story. I wonder if Andrew Orlowski will link to my blog and correct his story because his report is HUGELY damaging here.

The post relates to a story about IE7 that ultimately led to a major dustup regarding Scoble’s level of truthfulness (truth be told, the whole affair seemed more like interlocking personal vendettas… vendetti?). But that only underscores the point that blogs would seem to be fertile ground for this kind of controversy. Maybe Scoble’s popularity and visibility are imposing a new standard of responsibility regarding his “reporting”? If this happens, is he still a “blogger”? Does it matter?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2005 at 3:57 pm and is filed under General, Diary of a Business Blog, Blog usability.