Scoble: Don’t expect bloggers to do original reporting
A few months ago, at around the time he left Microsoft, Robert Scoble bemoaned the fact that most bloggers, even those that consider blogging a form of journalism, “rarely call before writing.” He added, “It’s something I hope we can change. Call before running the story. It’s what great journalists do.” At the time, I commented that a willingness to pick up the phone isn’t just something that great journalists do—it’s a baseline requirement for any kind of journalist. Alas, it looks like Scoble has changed his mind. In a recent entry, he commented that one should never “expect bloggers to do fact checking or original reporting. Even me.” Sorry, Scoble. You were right the first time. Bloggers who take their work seriously do plenty of original reporting. Om Malik, Rafat Ali, Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan are among the A-list bloggers who publish original work on a daily basis. And while it’s true that all cut their teeth in the MSM world, that needn’t be a prerequisite for doing your own reporting. The fact is, if bloggers want to be taken seriously, they need to take themselves seriously first. And that means disproving the myth that all bloggers are pajama-clad slackers with their fingers perpetually hovering over Ctrl-C—not giving in to it.
November 19th, 2006 06:21
Maybe he does have it right though… the way things are shaking out in the blogosphere, the top tier (“pros”) are starting to look more and more like traditional media; everybody else is a “blogger.” Which is why there’s PayPerPost, ReviewMe, etc. Maybe in another year blogger will mean “completely uncredible voice on the internet,” kind of like most other public net forums. Still, sad.
December 6th, 2006 22:16
Heh, 2 years of journalism school didn’t really pound this into my head. You did
I’m off to start pounding it into others