Bloggers Need Journalism

A recent conference for bloggers included a few hours of training on standard journalism skills, according to a report from the Associated Press. The Media Bloggers Association gave 300 of its members two days of training in things like accessing and analyzing government statistics.

The association's president said there's now 8 million people blogging. ("There's eight million stories out there in the city," went a Sixties-era cop show voiceover.) Now some bloggers are getting an interest in research, having risen past the vitriol level of bare commentary. Good for them. A few more years of training, some exams and papers, and they'll have what degreed journalists have: Skills to create stories that exude more than lather.

Meanwhile, us journalists need to get Blogger, some Web design software, the time to post, and learn Javascript or know somebody who does. I think I like the equation solved from my end. But we're both headed to the same place.

At Information Week, the editors say the blogging concept is sparking record reader interaction. There's something about putting the reader comments on an equal footing with a journalist's reports, the editor says. Yeah, equality. Much better place to write and report from than calling a print reporter something like "a dead-tree journalist."

Face it, each side has something to teach the other: about immediacy and access, for the journalists. About accuracy and inclusion, striving toward balance, for the bloggers. Then there's that advertising thing. Bloggers need it. You can put your blog up in the cattle call for media buys through Blogads. Blogs with fewer than 3,000 page impressions a week need not apply. The deal makes you give up 20 percent of your revenue, plus the Visa fee, and then Blogads will put you into their cattle call. Your blog better be, as Blogads says, "laser-sharp" in its focus.