Study Notes: Web Communications WEB101: How far are blogs and journalism dependent on each other? What would you say are the consequences of this link?

News in the traditional sense is a commodity traded for profit by those who have control over its distribution.

The role of the free press as the fourth estate of democracy is to keep a watchful eye over those in charge (e.g. government and the judiciary) and keep the general public informed of their actions (Harlow 2011) but news is also a business. If the general public are no longer interested in a story it is no longer saleable. Therefore the gatekeepers of information (e.g. newspaper editors) may choose not to invest money into their journalists researching these stories, no matter their importance to the community or democracy too for that matter.

This reminds me of the analogy James Surowiecki gave in his Ted Talk on social media and news – of the ants following the ants in a circle (TEDtalksDirector 2008). Although Surowiecki was referring only to blogging and social media communities, his analogy can just as easily be applied to that of traditional media forms - where the only news items reported are the ones the general public have an interest in, and the general public only have an interest in the news items reported.

Blogging therefore could be seen as the rogue ant to the journalistic circle but is probably better articulated by Granovetters theory of the “ weak ties” (Rettberg 2008) where someone who is not strongly embedded within a particular community has the ability to bring new information. This can be seen in example of Salam Pax blogging from an insider’s view during the invasion of American troops in Iraq, and Russ Kicks publishing images of coffins of deceased American servicemen on his blog in 2004 (Leaver 2011). At the time the general public did not have access to this information through traditional media. They may not have known they wanted access to this information but once they had seen it, they realized its importance which in turn prompted traditional media outlets to report it too.

Therefore I believe that one of the consequences of blogs on journalism is that they have and will continue to, loosen the grip that the traditional gatekeepers of information have over published content. Blogs and citizen journalists bring new information, new ideas and new viewpoints into the public domain, which can be investigated by traditional journalists. If popular enough these stories may be published by traditional media in online and offline environments and communicated to an even wider audience.