More thoughts on journalism and blogging.

Following on from my post a few hours ago in reaction to Jolie O'Dell's post about journalism, I've been thinking some more about how journalism interfaces with blogging and my thoughts have crystallised a bit further...

They echo Martin Belam’s comment on Jolie's post: “Some bloggers do journalism very well. Some bloggers don’t do journalism at all. Some professional journalists don’t seem to do journalism that well either…”

Journalism is something that any blogger, no matter their level of experience or background, can do as long as they do it ethically and responsibly. If they break a story or move a story forward through doing their own legwork to get interviews or quotes, or simply dig around the internet for original evidence and then present it in a fair and balanced way, they're being a news journalist. When they take a story from elsewhere and repackage it for their audience (in a way that’s respectful to the content and its creator) they're being a curator and when they write an opinion piece they're being simply a writer. They’re all tools that a blogger has up his or her sleeve and uses as the situation demands.

We certainly all need to keep ourselves in check by adhering to standards though.

Right, that's enough existential angst for one year...