Justin: I feel I should clarify my points somewhat. Firstly, I am not making a distinction between "bloggers" and "reporters" but between citizen/enthusiast/fan and reporter. If you haven't already, read Jon Chait's 2007 essay where he distinguishes between the reported "wonkosphere" and the unreported "netroots." A blogger can be either of those two, but MOST, not all, sports blogs fit into the enthusiast mode. Reporting is not just having sources, but working your sources, something that is both labor- and capital-intensive.
Secondly, I'm not disputing that there will be more and different types of reported news stories that emerge from the blogosphere, but just because there are more breaking stories about topic A (say all those bloggers who beat the big media in breaking campaign stories last fall) and more breaking stories in total, doesn't change the fact that there are less stories about topic B (say, the school board or the Federal Reserve). The question is whether we're okay living in a world with no reporting on those topics, and if we're not, how we're going to pay for them--one way is to rethink online ad and subscription models, the other is to make journalism a nonprofit, public-sector funded field. So none of this goes to say the web is bad for journalism, but rather to point out that "There is more content produced" is not, in itself, a justification of online journalism.
If all web journalism took the form of the reported blog, and if there were reported blogs for all beats, we'd be off to a great future, but so far, it doesn't work that way. I hope it does, and on good days, I believe it eventually will. |