Journalist blog too, y'know...

In Andrew Keen’s, The Cult of the Amateur, Keen argues attacks amateurism on the Web. As seen in class on the Colbert interview with him, he is not too fond of the so-called “citizen journalists.” He says they aren’t formally trained, they are not experts, and they are unskilled. He refers to citizen journalism as “journalism by nonjournalists.”

I agree with Keen that citizen journalists are not journalists, per se, but I do not agree completely in his argument that blogging translates to millions of “unskilled, untrained, unpaid, unknown “journalists.” Yes, there are millions that do fit that description, but in the entire blogger population, there are also journalists who are paid to blog as part of their job at a news organization. Most print journalists these days are indeed blogging.

There is the desire and almost need for fast information on part of the consumer. I know I check sports blogs and want the latest information about what I am interested in. Why wait until a newspaper is delivered in the early morning when I can go online and find some of the information 12 hours before it comes out in print? Between initial blog posts and the actual print publication, journalists can check with more sources and get more information. Not waiting and instead telling readers what they do know at the time is simply awesome.

Basically, my problem is that Keen says blogging is not journalism. For the most part it isn’t. I, however, have been writing since freshman year of high school. Five years later, I am in my fourth semester with the Indiana Daily Student, currently the basketball recruiting writer, and I am also in the honors program within the IU School of Journalism.

While I am not about to win a Pulitzer Prize or anything, I think my education and experience thus far qualifies me as a journalist. Everytime I write a post on the IDS “Basketblog,” I treat it like a regular article, even if its one paragraph long. I post with the same integrity, I cite my sources of information, and I print only what I know to be true about recruitment. I do not make up stories of players committing to IU that haven’t, and if I haven’t spoken to a recruit or recruiting expert myself, I will cite my source (and probably link to the article too).

I realize that Keen is mostly attacking “citizen journalists,” but he failed to distinguish them from actual journalists who blog. He also fails to define blogging itself, which can come in many forms—opinion writing, more fact-based writing, and the combination of posting links and adding in a bit of commentary to that. My IDS blogging differs from that of my C151 blogging, but in terms of the Basketblog, I am a journalist blogging. Don’t call me an unskilled or untrained non-expert.