Blogging vs Traditional News -Discussion Post Two

Blogging vs Traditional News

I remembered when blogging became very popular in the late 90’s and in the early part of the 2000’s almost everybody had a blog and if you were a writer it was a must that you have a blog. Newer and more updated technology always replaces older technology so it was assumed that possibly traditional news would have been replaced by blogging. Honesty, I thought so as well. The same way DVD’s replaced those huge VHS’s tapes was the same concept that people that blogging would have done to traditional news. However, in the article Why Bloggers Can’t Replace the Work of Professional Journalists, Rogers confirmed why blogging could never take traditional news place. He stated, “The problem with having blogs replace newspapers is that bloggers don’t produce news stories on their own.  Instead, they tend to comment on news stories already out there-stories produced by professional journalists.”

Once I read that quote, the light bulb immediately came on. I never thought but that! All this time it just seemed that since blogging was so popular and informative that it would have easily replaced true journalism.  One should really comprehend that true hardcore journalism involves the reporter hitting the pavement and searching to find out what is going on out here in this world, otherwise known as news. They review it and then report on it for the us to see. The flip side to that is that by the time bloggers get to it-it is merely a review of what the journalist found out and had already reported on.

Even so, blogging is still very popular and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Some would argue that maybe blogging is here to stay but so is traditional news. Since the beginning of journalism whether via television or through newspapers genuine journalism has been needed and respected and a daily part of life. News can be transcribed now via many ways like by the use of smartphones, tablets and even watches. However, the lovely Internet has afforded bloggers to come and try and duplicate traditional news. Nowadays there are even citizen journalists who are people who happen to be somewhere where “news” is happening and they film it with their phones or camera and give their own commentary on it. This is very popular and sometimes becomes funny videos and memes that have went viral online.

Blogging has definitely evolved to mimic traditional news. Carlson agreed and stated in his article, The Rise of the Traditional Blogger, “As a result, as Web critic Nicholas Carr told me, blogging has evolved to become a lot more like a traditional mass medium.” There is even a different way of blogging that is very effective for quick engagement and that is called  “microblogging.” Microblogging is still the sharing of someone’s posts of views and ideas on any given subject.  The posts are much smaller and to the point and an example of that are posts on Twitter.  The social media giant, Twitter had a certain character count for their users to state whatever is on their mind and that is what most people do, especially celebrities and they go viral almost instantly. Microblogging probably won’t replace regular blogging but nevertheless it is a very fun and quick way to get your thoughts across. In the long run traditional news will always remain supreme over blogging as blogging will always and only be reviews of actual true journalistic reports.