Journalism vs. Blogging?

As someone who is not very privy to the internet, I had never visited a news blog prior to being assigned reading from Brian Carroll's Writing for Digital Media. Honestly, if I had been shown a news blog before reading the chapter on personal publishing, I might not have noticed that it wasn't a professional source. Blogs like The Politico, Pressthink, and Talking Points Memo look remarkably like notable sources of journalism to an untrained eye. However, Carroll makes a valid point that journalism and blogging need not be mutually exclusive.

One of the major critiques of blogging is that there is not enough objectivity or accountability in their reporting. Jonathan Klein, a former executive vice president of CBS news, claimed that "you couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances [of professional journalists] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." While that concern is valid, what about the various pressures that professional news sources are under? Wouldn't a news corporation like CBS be under more pressure to sensationalize stories to receive high ratings and please their advertisers? That can affect the objectivity and accountability of reporting as well.

The fact is that these days, bloggers can be journalists, and journalists can be bloggers, by virtue of the fact that original reporting can be delivered both professionally and unprofessionally. The same goes for opinion and commentary--it is not limited to either sphere. Blogs can even be called a form of journalism if they deliver original reporting that has been verified, and if it is delivered with speed and transparency. Also, news blogs that fixate on opinion and commentary are inextricably linked to journalism because they rely on journalists to provide them with topics and issues to comment on. Blogging and Journalism, rather than being at odds with one another, have become interdependent.