at the cbs interactive christmas party in 2008 i had a conversation with sydney journalist @renailemay regarding whether or not there was a difference between journos and bloggers. renai was firmly of the opinion that both were one and the same. at the time i tended to disagree.
the debate has happened before and has even made it to court. my reason for disagreeing with renai was that there was a difference in the standard of credibility. journos are required to fact check and research or some editor somewhere unload an ugly red pen, whereas bloggers could be anyone churning out any kind of rubbish.
i’ve been mulling it over and examining my position a little closer and i now agree with renai. the heart of the issue for me was credibility. if credibility was not an issue are both not the same? i.e, is the function the same and only the medium different? both are writers breaking news or discussing current affairs, one writes for a newspaper and one writes online. journalists can be bloggers also. at the end of the day they’re still both writers.
it’s like saying a driver of a car is a driver, but a driver of a van is not.
the difference between a journo and blogger is therefore just the medium.
next post: what about the credibility issue?
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