If Blogging Isn’t Journalism, It Will Be

Max Hansen doesn't get it. The term "blog" is being overused, and rather than blogging becoming journalism, I'm expecting to see more of a differentiation in how people address their sites.

For example, I'm a writer, not a journalist. I don't report news, and I don't want to. What I do want to do is talk about news and my opinion of what's happened. I don't want to have to corroborate sources, I don't want to run my thoughts through an editor. There is a place for that, and this blog isn't one of them.

I do write for some more "professional" blogs, where my work is edited and fact-checked, and I consider those to be completely separate from what I do here. Quite frankly, some of those sites, even though they pre-dated the term "blog", would be considered to be blogs under the accepted definition. THEY don't really consider themselves to be blogs, though, and I think that's where the differentiation comes in.

Will lawsuits cause bloggers to become more cautious, and adopt more journalistic practices? Only the ones with something at stake, but for the rest of us, I think we have little to worry about. While I wouldn't mind having some protection under the law, I don't plan to put myself in a situation to have to worry about it.