Ashley Friedlein of e-consultancy made some good points about blogs and blogging in a post yesterday, noting some defensive criticisms of the blogosphere in traditional news sources. However, I think his arguments don’t go quite far enough.

In an era of scepticism, where traditional news media are viewed with a critical eye, all of our news is suspect. How has this been edited? What are the news values ruling this? Which advertisers or view points does it favour? Friedlein suggests that the appeal of blogs is linked to a desire for authenticity in our communications and that blog readers favour “honesty, transparency, self-expression, individuality and fun over accuracy, control and mediation”.

I think this is often true. Why do 9/11 conspiracy theories achieve a higher PageRank than official explanations? Because those individual, rebellious and (often) irrational explanations are, for many, more interesting to read. They challenge the established truth, and making the challenge is, for many readers, more important that whether the alternative explanations are valid or not.

However, I also think that this explanation of the appeal of blogs is far too broad. If we accept the expanation that blogs are challenging the dominance of the traditional media because we’re all zany, spontaneous free-thinkers then in some respects we’re giving in. We’re admitting the old media’s criticism that our writings and other creations are not as accurate or controlled as other sources. That simply isn’t true in the majority of cases. Yes, the stuff I write here has not been edited and fact-checked by another person, like the stuff I do for print publications. But that actually makes me quite anxious about being accurate. And I can trust readers to inform me of my mistakes.

Bloggers who write about the news want to be taken seriously. Why would readers ever come back if it seems like you’re just making the whole thing up, or giving a reaction that hasn’t been throught through? The 9/11 conspiracists, for example, aren’t putting up their alternative analysis for a joke. It’s because they believe that they are right, or that there are holes in the existing explanations, and they’ve got evidence to prove it. And their readers aren’t stupid. They aren’t going to accept your explanation wholesale just because it has appeared on a web site. Your views become part of the truth. It puts other explanations into context and allows for the further development of critical thinking about the news. Getting different perspectives on events or ideas is a good thing, and it’s a powerful part of the appeal and value of blogs.

Journalists complaining about bloggers – who are you to talk?
If you’ve been reading the national media press recently you may well have read more than an article or two by established journalists which attack the rise of blogging. Principally, they criticise the lack of quality (fact checking, grammar, sources, regulatory compliance etc.) exhibited by many bloggers.

But are they really just annoyed that bloggers are threatening their status? Are journalists asking themselves similarly tough questions about how their readers perceive them?

There are some fantastic journalists out there, no doubt. But there are also some fantastic bloggers. There are lots of very poor bloggers too. I guess the poor journalists don’t make it to press.

But I keep reading articles by respected journalists where the sub-text seems to be an intense irritation on the part of the journalist at the blogosphere as somehow corrupting and tainting their profession. Bloggers are the ‘cowboys’ of journalism it seems.

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Possibly related posts:

• Rules of Engagement
• Trust Me, I’m a Journalist
• Blogging Asia