Citizen Journalism: Blogging: The Invasion of the Horde

While OhmyNews-style citizen journalism has theoretical and practical appeal, no discussion of where citizen journalism is going is possible without looking at the enormous impact of its cousins:  blogging, photo sharing and social networking.

The simplicity of creating a blog site contributed heavily to the phenomenal growth in blog numbers.  Livejournal, Blogger, WordPress and other platforms not only provide template-based software that allow anyone with simple word processing skills to establish a blog in minutes, but then provide free storage space and indexing for the sites.

Many journalists cling to the notion that blogs are inconsequential drivel.  Pulitzer Prize winner Buzz Bissinger was livid in a televised discussion of blogging on HBO.

“I think that blogs are dedicated to cruelty, dedicated to journalistic dishonesty,” Bissinger said in an emotional, profanity-laced blast against Deadspin founder Will Leitch.  He later added “It is the complete dumbing down of our society.”

But the curmudgeonly sportswriting icon also voiced the growing concern of traditional journalists as he parried with Leitch: “Maybe that’s why I’m so heated and so angry. Because this guy [Leitch], whether we like it or not, is the future. I’m not the future.”

The numbers prove him right.  Remember that Technorati estimates the number of blogs in the world is growing at 120,000 per day.  If just 1¼ percent of those new blogs have “legitimate” journalistic content, that is as many new “real” publications each day as the existing 1,427 daily newspapers in the United States.  Over a year’s time, the mass of new content is beyond comprehension.

I once heard media economist Robert Picard explain the impact of blogging on newspapers in simple social terms.  “Two-thirds of the readers have not liked newspapers for 100 years but had no other place to go,” he said.  Blogging and citizen journalism provide that outlet for the discontented.

Blogging lets people from all walks of life take the media into their own hands. But for all their popularity among writers, blogs are poorly read.  A recent Synovate study estimated that 15% of Americans read blogs daily - about the same as those who consider them news sources.  That said, casual readership of blogs is growing, with nearly 40% of Americans visiting a blog sometime during the month.

The journalistic power in blogs, however, may stem less from their individual readership than from a characteristic of blog technology.  Blog software employs “permalinks.” A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog entry or post.  It means that search engines and Web site need not send readers to an entire blog, but simply to a single post.  This allows minor parts of otherwise unpopular blogs to bounce through the “blogosphere” quickly.

Those persistent links to blog posts played a large roll in the restructuring of a major news network. On Sept. 8, 2004, the CBS program 60 Minutes aired an investigation by Dan Rather offering typed documents as proof President George W. Bush had evaded the draft.  Later that evening Harry MacDougald, posting on FreeRepublic.com, challenged the validity of the documents based on the style of typeface.  Other bloggers picked up the post and searched for examples of 1970s typewriters.  The more popular Little Green Footballs and PowerlineBlog.com picked up the thread.  The following day, the nationally known DrudgeReport.com linked to it - after which the Associated Press and the traditional media waded in.

After the investigation showed the documents were indeed forgeries, CBS issued a humbling apology, key staff were fired and Rather later retired.

Most blogs, however, never touch politics or world events.  Of the top 100 blogs indexed by Technorati, blogs focusing on culture are by far most popular (27).  Technology blogs rank second (28) with only 16 dedicated to politics.  No comprehensive analysis of blog themes is available, but other reviews show a similar trend toward social and technology content.

Nowhere is this more obvious than the booming use of blogs by women.  The 2008 Social Media Study by BlogHer and Compass Partners found that 36.2 million American women participate in the blogosphere each week , of which 21.1 million read or post comments to blogs and 15.1 million personally post to a blog.

And they are loyal to their new online community.  The study found that 55% would give up alcohol before blogs and 42% would give up their iPod.  And while 43% would give up reading newspapers or magazine, one passion held firm:  Only 20% would give up chocolate.

For women, blogs are perceived as an avenue to relationships and friendships and access to “someone who cares about the same things they do.” Their biggest motivations to publish are for fun and to express themselves.  Advocacy, persuasion and reaching a large audience are way down on the list.

When millions of women write about fun topics to millions of others, is it journalism?

That question certainly is not restricted to text.  Millions of people worldwide upload their digital photographs to Flickr, Photobucket, Picassa and similar sites.  The photos are easily viewed by friends, family - or anyone else with an Internet connection.  As of the end of 2007, Flickr alone reportedly hosted more the 2 billion images.

Most of these sites allow text messaging, “favorite” collecting and comments among members.  Breaking news from natural disasters and civil unrest quickly make their way to the sites, but Flickr photos are more likely to depict children, pretty scenes and human faces.  A growing trend is for groups, pools or galleries dedicated to niche subjects such as grandchildren, dogs or even manhole covers,

The photo sharing services integrate well into blogs and are often used by people as a visual means to meet the same ends.  Photobucket, in particular, positions itself as a storage site to which photographers can link to illustrate blogs, websites or email.  The photo sharing services also extensively use Creative Commons, a variation on copyright licensing that provides some protection for authors, photographers and other content producers yet allows others to use the works with attribution.  It is a “share and share alike” system that reflects the general culture of the Internet.

The most common reaction to the blogging boom by traditional journalism outlets was to create their own blogs for staff writers.  This rapidly became so common that it is now more difficult to find newspapers without staff blogs than those with them.

But are they really blogs?  Even a cursory look at most of these blogs show they have a striking resemblance to the columns of years past. While they employ casual language and often delve into topics foreign to the front page, they still reflect the thinking of paid professional journalists.

I put the question to the 20,000 bloggers registered on a Fox TV station’s system in St. Louis, MO.  The “real” bloggers tended to humor me, but constantly reminded me that I wasn’t one of them.

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