Why Blogging Won't Replace Journalism

Last Friday's TNR Online featured a piece by Carolyn O'Hara, an assistant editor at Foreign Policy, that quickly generated controversy. O'Hara talked about Josh Marshall's attempt to solicit TPM readers as researchers in the wake of U.S. attorney scandal document dump. "In a few scant hours," she wrote, "this merry band of citizen-muckrakers produced enough commentary, most of it barely decipherable, to rival the document dump they were fervently scrutinizing." She went on to criticize the idea, popularized by Jay Rosen and others, of "ordinary Joes, toiling for free to dig for the stories that the mainstream press can't or won't touch."

TNR's commenters tend to be feisty, and their reaction was swift and furious. "If Jon Chait wonders why TNR is rather distrusted in the blogosphere," opined one of them, "look no further than columns like this, which serve to tear it down." Another called O'Hara an "imbecile." Most telling, however, was this observation: "Sometimes, I get the feeling I'm watching monks and the Church right after the printing press was invented." That is, now that the Pandora's Box of blogging has been opened, traditional media outlets, both large and small, are screwed.

Many of the comments seemed to be informed by the battles that have gone on between TNR and sites like Daily Kos and Atrios. Simply put, there's little love lost between TNR and certain parts of the liberal blogosphere. TNR sees a good chunk of Kos and Atrios readers as fringe, reactionary left-wingers (or at least writes about them in a manner that would suggest this), while many liberal bloggers, still infuriated over TNR's support of the war and not huge fans of Marty Peretz, see the magazine as a mouthpiece of the neoconservative movement. (For what it's worth, I think many progressives underestimate TNR's independence, but that's another post for another day.)

So the commenters largely saw O'Hara as part of the elitist, credulous media crowd that, in their eyes, is threatened by the rise of the citizen-journalist. It's unfortunate that they were so conspiracy-minded, because O'Hara made a valid point that deserves more debate. Since the rise of blogging has largely coincided with a spreading, devastating distrust of traditional political news outlets, many are thinking the following:

1) The mainstream media's coverage and analysis of politics have been absolutely reprehensible for the past several years.

2) Blogging is a much more democratic medium; it grants access to anyone who wants it and can be used to spread stories that the mainstream media ignore.

3) Therefore, the future of political reporting is blogging, including blogging by those whose occupation is not journalism.

1) and 2) are completely accurate, but I think it's wrong to think that 3) follows. Blogging is good for many things; one of its most important functions is to critically monitor traditional news coverage. No other medium allows such a quick response time and such wide dissemination -- mere minutes after the Times or Post prints a story riddled with errors, millions can know about it. This is fantastic, and this is where those who talk about the mainstream media no longer having a monopoly on the news are absolutely correct.

Many people take it one step further, however. The traditional roles no longer apply, they say: The roles of news consumer and news producer are bleeding into one another. Journalism as an occupation is obsolete. A lot of these assertions come from bloggers, of course, who are rightfully angry about the laxity of news coverage in recent years, but who also have an agenda.

The fact of the matter is this: Any worthwhile news or analysis blog is worthwhile because of the traditional, age-old rules of journalism. If your blog is good, it is because you are skeptical, you know how to fact-check, and you're not unwilling to develop sources or look at old stories from a new angle. None of these skills is new -- what is new is the medium in which they are practiced. But the medium itself doesn't contain any magic powers. An excellent politics blog isn't excellent because it's a blog; it's excellent because its author or authors practice good journalism.

I understand the impulse to distrust the news outlets that have failed us and to wish them the worst. But it's unrealistic to think the average citizen can come home from work, log on, and rival the efforts of most journalists. Journalism does require skills, and has failed us not because there is some inherent flaw in the idea that some people are journalists and some people aren't, but rather because professional journalists have failed to do their jobs properly. Blogging has a role, and a very important one, but the best journalists -- whether they be news writers, columnists, or bloggers -- are those who practice a core set of skills that remain unchanged despite all the new technology at our disposal.

The most realistic scenario is not one in which millions of amateurs take the reins and replace traditional journalism, but rather one in which traditional journalists face healthy scrutiny from bloggers and are forced to do their jobs (traditional journalists, of course, will be blogging more and more, and blogging will make it easier for talented young journalists to get noticed). The aggregate efforts of all the bloggers and commenters out there can certainly change the course of things and force stories to the forefront, but professional journalists -- those with the time, skills, and contacts to get to the bottom of stories -- will always be our best bet for chipping away at the thickening wall between government and the people.