In this Internet era, blogs are the new journalism. Someone loves them and some people hate them.
But the most important thing that we can say is that internet changed one of the greatest obstacles to true freedom of the press by eliminating or greatly reducing the cost of production and distribution.
However the function of traditional media remains undeniable and irreplaceable for now, and the blogs tend not to replace but to complement the traditional media.
A blog can be a diary. If you invite just a few people to post, and those same people are all who can read it, a blog is groupware; a blog can be a community. Let a lot of people offer posts, organize the comments, add polls and ratings. A blog can be your picture collection. It can be a record of what you saw today. So, as you can see, is difficult to give a precise definition of blogs because blogs are many different things. What appear to be clear, however, is that blogs need mainstream media, and that, today, the mainstream media also need blogs.
From the perspective of journalism, blogs can be seen as a new category of news and current affairs communication. But is blogging journalism? I don’t think that the answer is always no. To say a blog is journalism is like saying web pages are journalism. Journalism can happen on Web pages, and on blogs, in lots of places. Not everything that's printed is journalism. Not everything that's on a blog is journalism. I think that the definition of a journalist depends on the activity, not on the medium. Infact, in my opinion, if you seek factual, contemporary truths for an audience (of any size) and write well, you are a journalist!
Today popular blogs are hosted on the websites of major newspapers, journalists learn to monitor blogs as information sources and bloggers, in turn, learn to monitor the media constantly to follow news and events that are beyond the radar of so-called "mainstream" media.
We must also consider the possibility that in the future be born a new trade, close to the journalist: the profession of professional bloggers. Infact, the readers of the future, those who today are young, even now read more blogs than read newspapers or watch the news on television.
Today, blogs seem to be everywhere, in and around journalism: the
media publish blogs as one item in their online content repertoire; individual journalists have taken up blogging, and an array of amateurs (with regard to journalism) are maintaining blogs that at least to a certain extent resemble news journalism.
The interesting thing is that today there is an interpolation between journalists and bloggers, in fact many journalists keep their own blogs. But another important thing is that blogs have allowed people to share ideas and build resistance in non-democratic countries such as China and Iran, where censorship is heavy but blogs are able to slip through.
An example is the Iran’s spontaneous street demonstrations over Friday’s “stolen election” has ignited a storm of information on social networking sites such as Twitter and the photographic facilities of Flickr.
This is an example of a blog of an Iranian boy who, thanks to his articles keeping us informed about what really goes on in his country: http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/
But also in Moldova students are using Twitter as a tool to mobilize opposition against a communist victory in Moldovian elections. According to reports, close to 10,000 protesters gathered at Moldova’s parliament in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital and were able to eventually break through police lines to storm into the building. But twitter is just one example of many blogs or social network in the world used to communicate events that would otherwise be prohibited. So I believe that the use of blogs is fundamental, because thanks to the internet and blogs now everyone can freely express their point of view. In this way they can reach all the masses and all citizens can be informed about what really happen in the world.
The blog phenomenon is exiting the amateur stage, which still is not mature, but which is characterized by a tendency towards the integration of blogs in mainstream media.
Mediasphere and blogosphere are learning to live togheter, adapting to each other, in a world where you need both.
Michela Menghini
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