digital credibility: the divide between journos and bloggers
January 18, 2009 by Jonathan Nguyen · Comments
there are possibly thousands of articles online on how to increase your credibility online. many of them are written by search engine optimisation types, others are by social media “experts”. i want to approach this from a journalism / blogger perspective.
journos as i have discovered come from all walks of life. some of them went to school, some of them did not (like my father). starting life out as a journo is hard work, if you’re good enough and lucky enough to land a cadetship for a major publication you get put through the rigours of the newsroom and start writing your first pieces. along the way you are mentored, fact checked and edited. eventually, you automatically do all those things yourself (and still get mentored, fact checked and edited).
when readers read your work they trust that the publication you are working for, by their reputation – the reputation they have worked hard to earn and maintain – means that your work is as factual as possible. when that journo has established a body of work that is credible, their reputation stands on its own.
what about a blogger?
putting aside the well worn path of tips and tricks, a search for “blogger credibility” will yield an enormous amount of results. Darren has a great series on this topic over at his blog.
the long and the short of is it has to be built up over time from a body of work. in the end, if your output is good (could mean interesting, factual or offer insight) you build a reputation. the difference is, unless you are already have an established reputation elsewhere, you have to work much harder. you don’t have the implied reputation of a major masthead earlier on.
of course, if you’ve made a name for yourself elsewhere because you’re already an established expert in another field and you blog about that field, you also bypass the extra time at the beginning.
once this reputation is established though, whether you are a blogger or a journalist is purely semantics.
it was this train of thought that led me to agreeing with @renailemay in the end.
