It is easy to confuse popularity with professionalism; hence with time bloggers believe they are journalists.
Bloggers think writing and posting entries is a journalistic approach. Blogging is more editorial and filtered and a passion, whereas journalism is a paid profession and all about balance and being unbiased.
Sarah Arrow said blogging has become one of the most popular online activities in recent years. Just about everyone has learned to establish a blog.
Blogging and journalism are two different things to begin with, even if similarities are shared across the board. Bloggers are influential, and Journalists are ethical.
Differences between journalism and blogging
According to Gary Bembridge, one is not “better” than the other. They do a different thing for needs.
Journalism is a formally paid profession. You can never wake up one day and decide to be a journalist, whereas you can learn how to establish a blog then research and consistently produce blog entries for audiences.
On the one, journalists take pride in providing information that is fair, balanced and unbiased. Research is put into an article information is gathered and facts are reported, opinions from experts are expected. In this profession, all sides of a story are provided to gain credibility within the industry.
On the other hand, bloggers are at most open-minded writers and are much opinionated. Research for a topic on a blog entry is required but often the entry is one-sided, there is no fuss in providing work that requires all sides of the story. Bloggers tend to offer opinion and analysis links to news stories reported by mainstream media.
Journalists have one core content expertise while blogging has multiple content skills. Journalists have a drive in finding new information and bloggers are mostly known for regurgitating content that has been rotating in media.
Journalism can sometimes seem boring due to having to deliver to word counts to accommodate the publication, and tend to produce one article per session, it’s all about the content limitation. Blogging is unlimited content. You can produce lengthy blogs if you choose, as long as you keep your readers interested. The content has a long life and always available.
Journalists can never write an article with a first person style, and content needs to be tight and concise all the time. Bloggers can write on a first person basis, work is self-edited, and they loosely cite sources.
To sum it up, with traditional media you put a lot of time and effort into reporting, editing, fact checking and illustrating stories. Journalists are at most limited to what can be published due to publications’ ethical codes. These rules do not (strictly) apply to bloggers. On the contrary, bloggers have changed journalism with its flair of reporting anytime and anywhere.
VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS BLOG POST BELONG TO THE GUEST BLOGGER AND DO NOT REFLECT VIEWS OF ENITIATE IN ANY WAY.
