Why journalists must learn the values of the blogging revolution

June 25, 2008 9:02 AM

The debate over blogging's usefulness to journalism tends to get stuck in a cul de sac, mainly because too few people - well, too few journalists - treat it seriously. At conferences I've attended recently, speakers have referred to blogging as little more than a sad ego trip. It is not regarded as having any real public service value.

I'll scream if I hear yet again that the blogosphere is a form of anarchy, a cacophony of self-centred and mischievous voices who are either talking to each other or talking to no-one at all. I'm not denying that aspect, though I don't see why people sitting at computer terminals day after day and downloading their thoughts should threaten civilisation as we know it.

What is also clear, most obviously in peer to peer blogging, is that people are engaged with each other as never before. Without any institutional or corporate coaxing, people are forming cyber communities in which they converse endlessly about their interests.

I say this as a preliminary to explaining why journalists, especially print veterans like me, are so suspicious of bloggers. We have spent our lives dominating conversations. No, that's wrong of course. We did not converse at all. We lectured. We provided the information that people feasted on in order to hold their own conversations.

DEPOSING THE SECULAR PRIESTS

But, the odd "letter to the editor" aside, we were largely unaware of the content of those conversations. We moved on. We were the secular priests who decided what information to give the great unwashed and even told them how they should react to that information, what to think and what to do. Public service performed. Job done. How clever were were. How privileged.

In that old paradigm - to which many editors and journalists still cling - news was one-way traffic. We conceived it. We gathered it. We published it and broadcast it. It was justification enough that people bought our newspapers or tuned in to our radio and TV channels.

Blogging turns that model on its head. It allows people to question the information we provide. It allows them to produce their own information. It offers them a space to air their own views. The congregation is no longer in awe of the priests. Our supremacy is crumbling.

Rightly, journalists point out that there is no perfect example of journalists and bloggers working in harmony. That's because journalism is undergoing a more profound change than traditionalists can bear to imagine. I've been as guilty of this reactionary thinking too.

I have tended to predict that future news organisations will consist of a small hub of "professional journalists" at the centre with bloggers (aka amateur journalists/citizen journalists) on the periphery. In other words, us pros will still run the show.

I'm altogether less certain about that model now. First, I wonder whether us pros are as valuable as we think. Second, and more fundamentally, I wonder whether a "news organisation" is as perfect a model as we might think.

The growth of media in the last century or so has been dominated by the growth of big media, which really means the growth of big media people, whether they be individual entrepreneurs or corporate chiefs. It is entirely conceivable that the digital revolution may, in the fullness of time, sweep the media mogul aside.

UNDERSTANDING THE IDEALISTS

Though I long ago rejected Marxist orthodoxy, I retain an affection for, and understanding of, the idealism of those who originally espoused revolutions. In most cases the majority were enthused to overturn the established order because they genuinely believed in democracy (and were then let down, of course, by a new form of totalitarianism).

But the joy of the digital revolution is that it is bloodless, and democracy is at its heart. However, as with political revolutions, the establishment views it as anarchy and therefore dangerous. In fact, as everyone should surely know, democracy is rather messy. It is often chaotic. It is often illogical. It does not obey rules.

I think journalists are failing to grasp that truth. Blogging, though democratic in spirit, does threaten the established order of journalism. I was inspired to write this after reading a blog posting by Adam Tinworth (courtesy of a tip from Kristine Lowe. Many thanks). Tinworth writes: "Most media people don't realise that blogging is a community strategy. They think of it as a publishing process... They certainly don't think of it as a conversation." Here are some more highlights:

Blogging is all about personal voices interacting with one another, not about personal voices lecturing. And that's something that the media usually misses...

It's all too easy for people from a traditional media background to see community as a place - something off to the side where the readers go, while the journalists sit over here in the real part of the site. They are content-focused, not people-focused. After all, that's what the job's been all about for the last century or so.

Sure, they may occasionally deign to join in a few threads. Or include a letters page in the print title. But, usually, it's very much "them and us".

You can see shades of this in everything from the early days of both The Guardian's Comment is Free and the Daily Telegraph's My Telegraph, to the url choice for our Farmers Weekly forums: http://www.fwi.co.uk/community.

When we journalists talk about integration we generally mean, integrating print and online activities. But the true integration comes online itself. The integration between journalists and citizens. Of course, there should be no distinction between them. But journalists still wish to see themselves as a class apart.

We have to open ourselves up to a new thought process. There is no us and them. I had a sudden thought to end this posting with a Marxist-style call to arms: "Bloggers of the world unite". But it is the lack of unity that makes blogging so vibrant, so critical and also so self-critical. And, of course, so revolutionary.