The resemblance of Bloggers and Journalists.

If we were to classify bloggers and journalists as a same entity, we would have to dig deeper regarding each definition and objectives that they bear. According to the ever so informative Wikipedia, journalism is define as  "The practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the citizenry."  Blogging on the other hand is an act of writing on a blog, short form of web log. The content of the blog varies widely, and it doesn't abide to any restrictions or criteria as opposed to what works of journalism has to. Both forms requires the writer to write about a particular topic or so, but what differs are their intricate details in some aspects. For one aspect, bloggers write out of passion. They write with the liberty of being able to express their thoughts, opinions and feelings towards a certain subject without any pay to be look forward to. Journalists on the other hand writes for a living, get paid for it and is sometimes restricted to fact-oriented only and is often closed off for any radical thinking as to avoid any miss-happenings that the press might be objected to.  

Conclusively, if journalism is a properly structured way of writing with the intention of of communicating towards the mass out there, then blogging is just a similar form of it but is more barren and is concentrated with the idea that 'everyone is entitled to their own of opinions'. But the same question of the day still surfaces itself after all of this explanations. Are they really so similar that we can define bloggers as journalists as well ?? ;O


There is but one statement that can answer this particular mind-boggling question. Blogging is validated as an instrument for journalism ! D:  Just think of it this way, while journalism products are often acquired in the form of prints such as newspapers, magazines and whatnot, blogging posts contents can very well have the same degree of substantiation and truth as any work of journalism. Just that blogging is in the form of digital format ! So with such affirmation been concluded, we could really do justify bloggers of having to bear the same tasks and expectations of any journalists out there, the difference is the validation of the works being produced. This came on as a common topic of discussion as because blogging can be done by anybody at all, the accuracy of some info will tend to be a mixed of a pool of public rumors, as opposed to journalists who really has to take their word for true for if the content was false, they could be very well charged for libel. So for bloggers to be producing journalism through the net and to be taken highly of it, the accuracy of the source and content plays a big part in making it all believable. Heck, there's a truckload of real journalists who turns to blogging for a more fullfilling writing session of their own. And some printed media have already turned blogs to complete their publication; for eg BusinessWeek Online are developing blogs to accompany their printed ones.


To conclude my post, here's an article about the credibility of bloggers being labeled as a journalist as well.  Can bloggers be journalists ?