The newest trend in online news reporting is the web logger, or blogger. The blogger writes, in essence, op-ed pieces about subjects that interest them on their personal pages, called blogs. Many free blog-hosting sites exist, such as Vox.com, Livejournal.com, and Xanga.com, with more professional companies such as WordPress providing advanced blog-hosting services.
The role of the blogger as a part of the journalistic world has recently been controversial. Some traditional journalists see bloggers as undisciplined want-to-be journalists providing opinions instead of news. Other journalists have embraced the blogging community, often supplying blogs for their editors. The Knoxville News Sentinel allows its employees to have blogs, and the reporters use them to provide their opinions on certain situations, or delve further into depth on stories that may interested them, but do not get published because of lack of space.
Bloggers also change the role of the journalist as an information gatekeeper. Jay Rosen, in an article he wrote for the Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility Conference, cites a report that states bloggers, as audience members, are also involved in gatekeeping by controlling the information that they choose to report (Rosen 51). In theory, bloggers are a different sort of journalist, often fitting into the adversarial or populist mobilizer category. Most bloggers report on things that interest them and their audiences, and many blogs are not objective.
Rosen also quotes a former newspaper editor of the Washington Post, who says that “objectivity has outlived its usefulness as an ethical touchstone for journalism” (Rosen 51)" This editor’s point is that an objective story can be manipulated by the government or other high-ranking organization to meet an agenda they may be trying to push.
Subjective journalism, which is pushed by bloggers, is almost impossible to conform to multiple agendas, because it constitutes opinion. The bloggers act as gatekeepers for the news they want to present, and it is up to the reader to glean what information they like from a blogger’s opinion. RSS also helps the reader be his or her own gatekeeper; by syndicating multiple blogs, the reader may be able to gain a clear picture of the information by viewing it through many reports.
Rosen also feels that bloggers are more believable reporters of information because they identify with the public. Here again is the argument between supporters of authorial voice as a contributor to credibility. In the case of bloggers, the identity of the author, which classifies them as a part of the public and not of a large news corporation, allows a reader to decide how little or how much they plan to believe from that blogger’s opinion. A traditional journalist’s style is harder for a reader to parse, due to the high amount of editing that occurs before a story is published.
Despite the stark differences between the writing style and ideas of traditional journalists and bloggers, Rosen believes that the two groups can work together as a unified voice of news. He does not see bloggers and journalists as comparable in news reporting activities. Instead, he sees bloggers as important contributors to straight news supplied by traditional journalism. By reading both the traditionally reported stories and the opinions expressed by bloggers, Rosen sees the possibility for a more complete picture of information for the consumer, which is ultimately the goal for all news reporters, opinionated, neutral, populist, or otherwise (Rosen 52).