Dvorak and Malik take on "Blogging vs. Journalism"

The most intelligent conversation yet on the blogger/journalist dichotomy took place between John C.Dvorak and Om Malik at Wordcamp on 7/21.



some points

Dvorak starts with a point about newspapers co-opting blogs that are then "overseen by the man" (written by reporters under the auspices of the paper.) And points out that many newspaper blogs do not get comments--that there's a lack of sincerity on the part of the bloggers (and mentions a significant comment made by someone at the New York Times...)(note: sometimes a lack of comments has to do with the 10% rule: only 10% of people reading anything online will comment. 90% are lurkers.)

Malik mentions blogger's passion--and that blogs are a different kind of media with a different dynamic than newspapers. New media doesn't necessarily replace old media.

Dvorak mentions how Forbes would not let him link out to sources. This is still a problem on the part of many newspapers that just don't get the importance of links--which Dvorak explains.

On moderating comments: a young man from the NYTimes speaks up about the difficulties of mmoderating comments--that it's time cosuming and that filters don't work well. Maintains that a filter could keep Dick Cheney from posting a comment. Dvorak thinks this is bull: "If your filtersare worth a shit, you wil not filter Dick Cheney." True. The argument that filtering is time-consuming is irrelevant if comments are important to a newspaper, and the money must be spent in either moderating or in good filtering software.

Malik maintains (as many experienced bloggers do) that "you [the writer] set the tone." It's up to you to create civility--and he uses my favorite bar analogy: each blog is like a bar. You, the blogger, are the bartender. It's up to you to keep the discourse polite and to the point. You set the attitude for the comments.

Finally, Malik makes the important point that newspapers shouldn't absorb blogs (which goes along with the point about newspaper reporters creating blogs for sites) Malik advocates newspapers aggregate local blogs

(with much thanks to John Pozadzies of One Man's Blog for shooting and sharing this great vid-- John's post also gives pointers on the equip he used to shoot this.)

Journalism, citizen journalism, media, blogging