Is Blog The Future Of Journalism?

[Christian Ricardo Lubis]

I had this question came up in my academic test today. and i would like to know what is everyone else thinks about this question. since the the rate of ad in newspaper has decline rapidly since the rise of blogs, it got me thinking. is it true?

[Mark Coughlan]

Possibly.

I can see group blogs run by respectable jounralists becoming a major productions and attraction in ten years or less.

The one difference newspapers and blogs have is respectability. Newspapers have developed a trust with their readers over the years as a source of information provided by writers the readers know and trusts. Blogs are anonymous sources that don't have to answer to anyone or adhere to any professional codes of practice. Maybe blogs will take over from newspapers as the location for feature articles but as a source of news, newspapers and websites for news groups will always be the trusted source, features will tag along to that in my opinion.

[Christian Ricardo Lubis]

"Blogs are anonymous sources that don't have to answer to anyone or adhere to any professional codes of practice". and quate from mark. this is basically what i wrote for the anwser. it is interesting to see my lecturer's point of view upon my anwser since he is one of the leading editor of one of the largest and most influential newspaper in Indonesia called Kompas. looking forward for a new reply

[Alyssa Mitchell]

Blogs are great, but only a small part of the solution. The solution is a multi-media web format. Video, slide shows, blogs, forums, and RSS feeds are going to be the wave of the future in journalism, but we need to learn it today to be ready for tomorrow. Think quick, colorful, and organized. Just be careful with your use of color or you'll end up with too much of it.

[Jason McGregor]

I agree. Newspapers always seem like they are behind the technology curve and we need to find a way to get ahead. I can't say I have the answer to what newspapers have to do right now, but I think it starts understanding how people use technology.

The way I see it, people will use technology to receive breaking news, to use interactive tools that can easily tap into large databases of information and to get their news on the go. A good place for newspapers to start is to look at how they can insert themselves into the world of smarts phones. Make sure your website is smart phone accessible and create smart phone applications that people will want to download and use.

Blogs aren't anonymous sources. They are just a form of technology. An ethical journalist can run a respectable, factual blog and I think blogs are a piece of the puzzle, but not, on their own, the future of journalism.

Not to sound too philosophical here, but the future of journalism is what has always been: Providing thoughtful, interesting news delivered in a way that is relevant in people's everyday life.

[Sketchee]

The answer might end up being that more technology companies will hire journalists, perhaps seasoned journalists that once worked for major newspapers. It will be very hard for the existing newspaper companies to adapt, but it is very easy for the workforce to move on if they become more willing

[David Brauhn]

Well, the future isn't Twitter.

Blogging is a small part of the future. Blogging is a form that allows content to be published more timely and relayed more personally and briefly than with print. If news is a game, blogging is the winner. It does not do other things as well. Fifty-inch thumbsuckers, for instance; people rarely get through them now on paper, so why would they have the patience to passively scroll that long? After a few minutes, readers have to have something to click on unless they're completely stoned.

Print will fade faster than you think, and it absolutely will not take 10 years in large markets. With the rapid rate of layoffs and buyouts, papers will be stripped down enough to steer their ships into the deep water of electronic media. They are still just dabbling now, because print advertising is still paying the bills. Once papers find a rate structure that actually works and they expand their advertising offerings (think those goddamn pre-rolls) the change will happen quicker. Newspapers will have to see the absolute bottom, though, before ditching print altogether, but many are close to that bottom. The last news organizations in the U.S. to actually print will likely be in little towns where the papers ("Look, the paper is actually on paper, honey!") will be considered quaint.

In a few years time, editors will ask themselves this prime question before publishing any story: "Will readers on the toilet care enough to scroll through on their iPhones?"

Really, the question "Is blogging the future of journalism?" is not the question to ask anymore. If you're going to ask any academic questions, I'd ask these: "Is mobile the future of journalism?" and "Is video the future of journalism?"

But we know the answers to those. Yes and yes. The real question is this: When will advertisers, readers and news gatherers and aggregators -- everyone -- adopt a technological standard for delivery? Now, it's not even a three-ring circus; it's a series of incomplete sideshows. In the past, the standard medium was ink and paper. What will be the equivalent? Will news be delivered via a small, personal device that is a phone, a computer, a video camera and a television all in one? Will it be electronic paper? Will it light cigarettes? You get the idea.

When this future comes, "blogging" will go away. There will be no "blogging" because readers will equate news with electronic medium, because there will be nothing else. They will say "news," and, maybe, anachronistically, "newspaper," but only in the same way we call cars "automobiles."

[Tim McCormick]

I believe that the decline in print and broadcast revenue in recent quarters (X32) is related to myriad and complex issues that bear witness to social and economic forces.
The very electronic pages we are sharing in this forum will be viewed as naive and primitive before today's newspaper print yellows with age.
There will be better media afoot. Yes.
Blogging as the big future media? Not likely.
Blogging as a social media and force that might over take letters to the editor. Maybe.
Nothing will ever replace the time crafted journals of reasonable discourse.
The future of journalism will be dispersed through creative + interest-driven
and revenue-inducing displays that will be portable and sensory.
Let us all be realistic and patient as too many of us are
trying to fit an Apple image of the future into a P.C. world.

[David Brauhn]

The social and economic forces that drive the Internet are not going away. People in the U.S. aren't going to come running back to newspapers, even if the economy goes gangbusters. (If you're a "Big Lebowski" fan: "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus.") According to an article in Editor & Publisher, some major cities will be without newspapers by 2010 (www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_conte...).
The problem with the "time-crafted journals of reasonable discourse" is this: By the time they get around to disseminating their discourse, bloggers will have beaten them to it and moved on, and so will their readers. And if readers haven't caught onto that advantage yet, they will. Reporters are. I think there is a misconception that only 11-year-old girls use blogs to rant. Or, at least, that they are full of inaccurate or worthless tidbits. As someone said before in this thread, it is simply a medium; a blog in the hands of a journalist is journalism.
I don't think of the future as wearing an Apple image, but the days of sending an army of kids out at 6 a.m. to throw papers at houses are certainly numbered. What will push an "Apple image of the future" is a shrinking work force and an exponentially growing number of platforms to distribute news. How can an organization that once had a single platform, print, now additionally distribute news via RSS, video, blogs, podcasts, Twitter and all the other various means with a shrinking staff? Newspapers are going to have to concentrate their efforts.
We could be patient, but if you work at a newspaper, especially in the U.S., you won't see much of that. You'll see, at best, urgency, and, at worst, panic. You won't see some familiar faces, and if you haven't experienced layoffs, you will at least be dealing with natural attrition. How many Web producers have you seen laid off lately? Not many. Now count at the number of ad production, distribution, press, and newsroom workers left holding their flat hats on the curb (www.graphicdesignr.net/papercuts). That is realistic.

[Stephen Swofford]

As everyone is saying, blogs are one small part of the future of journalism of course, in most outlets they are part of the present. Are they the complete future? I doubt it.

I think places like spot.us have a great idea as to what direction journalism needs to be headed. Getting funding not through advertising, which as we all know is abysmal on the internet, but through the very readers we are trying to keep interested.

No matter what, journalism won't disappear and all this sky is falling panic seems a bit unproductive to me. Even all the talk about video. Video is a fad, and as such it will fade eventually and the still image will rise again. Does that mean we should ignore it? Of course not, the public is our audience and as such we must cater to their whims, but that doesn't mean we should start jumping ship every time they turn away from our medium of choice. As I said, we are caterer's to the public. As such we have an obligation to them and to ourselves to stay ahead of the curve, or at the very least in the middle of the curve, in new forms of media.

The real question is, how to we keep an audience's attention amongst a seemingly infinite amount of news sources?

[David Brauhn]

As a photography intern, I can see how you might not want to believe in video and the "sky is falling panic," but there are some hard facts about your business to face, and while I appreciate your faith that the still image will supplant the video "fad," there is little ground in which to root that faith. There will always be a place for photo journalism; just don't be surprised if the number of markets for it dwindles.
I visited spot.us, and that is an interesting concept. However, writing stories based reader commissions entirely rules out breaking news. If they don't know about it, how can they ask for it? Taking money for stories is highly problematic in terms of journalism ethics. Also, I don't know any professional journalists who would want to rely on donations and commissions to feed their families.
I agree that jumping ship is not the way to go; there has been quite a bit of scrambling to change the face of journalism. I think the best thing a print product can do is unapologetically be a print product. Let the electronic media do what they do best. They can complement one another, but sustaining all products and the staff required to produce them well may become unfeasible.
Although you say video is a fad, you also say we need to stay ahead of the curve. Video represents a good part of that curve. As do blogs. If we cater to the public, I don't see people banging on the table, hollering for more newspapers to read. I don't see the static printed story and the static printed image as the most popular modes of the future.
As for keeping an audience's attention, good luck. The problem is the audience is also your competition.

[Karthikeyan M]

I don't think blogs could replace the print. Just take this survey for instance, since the advent of internet in 1990's to till day, how many e-books are there on the net ? Or how many e-papers are freely available ? Have books and papers disappeared.
One cannot expect to gather information and produced it in any format for free, even if there is layoff or war, you cannot expect the security personnel at the company to write blogs on them or give it for free when layoff targets him.

The information produced to a common man is different from web and newspaper (ranging from displaying them and the required information)