Are Bloggers Journalists?

What is blog?

A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web Pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art, photographs, videos, music and audio. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Then, a blogger is a person who write entries in, add material to, or maintain a web blog, and also keeps and updates the blog. 

Different from a blogger, a journalist is a person who collects and disseminates information about current events, people, trends, and issues. His or her work is acknowledged as journalism. 

Reporters are one type of journalist. They create reports as a profession for broadcast or publication in mass media such as newspaper, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, or the internet. Reporters find sources for their work, their reports can be either spoken or written, and they are often expected to report in the most objective and unbiased way to serve the public good. Depending on the context, the term journalist also includes various types of editors and visual journalists, such as photographers, graphic artists, and page designers. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist 

Are Bloggers journalists?

Nowadays, there are many bloggers who are consider themselves as a journalists. I do not know that I’d say blogging is a new form of journalism, no. Blogging is certainly a newer type of writing style. Blogging and journalism aren’t exactly the same, but they achieve the same results. A blogger writes out of passion, out of an extreme interest for a particular topic. The differences that I can see between the two is content. They’re both there to produce content. Bloggers write because they want to. Journalists write to get paid, because it is their job. 

Using that definition, blogging isn’t journalism, but journalists can blog. In fact, as a tool, blogging is particularly suited to journalism because it can help journalists connect and understand their readers better. 

Regardless of the position on the topic, it’s clear that bloggers are gaining more and more influence. Audience size is growing for many, and collectively bloggers have a reach equal to or greater than traditional media across many categories. Bloggers and traditional outlets are both equipped with the ability to rapidly spread information across the Web at the same pace. But how credible is information from blogs?This is part of the reason accurate and misinformation is spread so quickly online, many bloggers are copying each other.

This is another differences that I see between bloggers and journalists. Bloggers tend to write what they know, think and feel. Journalists are supposed to give facts, and unfortunately don’t always get them correct. Blogging is just a medium, which has routines, the normal way of doing things that are evolving right now. In the same way news writing is less formal than academic writing, blogging is less formal than news writing.

So, the conclusion is no, most bloggers are not journalists. Some journalists are bloggers and vice versa. It comes down to the quality, accuracy and authenticity of the content from our own perspective.

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