So says Alex Jones, the director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in a recent Los Angeles Times commentary. I like the headline of his piece: "Bloggers Are the Sizzle, Not the Steak."
You got that right, baby. Blogging is all about editorializing, opinionating and venting. It's not about objective fact-gathering, news storytelling and analysis. Nor should it be. So when I saw that the Democratic and Republican national conventions granted press passes to a few high-profile bloggers such as Wonkette, I raised my eyebrows.
Their posts will be fun, catty and full of gossip. But that's entertainment, not news. Diet Tab, not whole milk. Perhaps the conventions should have given them "entertainment" passes instead.
However, journalists can be bloggers. A number of them are, as evidenced by Andrew Sullivan, Poynter's Jim Romenesko, many others, and of course, yours truly (batting eyelashes).
Good point! I'm not disagreeing that the bloggers should be there. But just to take what they say with a grain of salt. I look forward to what they say about Arnold. Maybe he'll call a bunch of the journos "girle men," which is always good for a laugh.
ReplyDelete