I think a source of some confusion is that weblogs have become so ubiquitous. In early days people had personal home pages (usually pictures of their cats). The primal blog was probably robotwisdom.com, started around 1997. It established the form as a series of regularly updated posts on a topic or topics of interests to the author or authors in reverse chronological order, with the most recent at the top of the page. There were a couple of applications that made it a little easier (anybody remember pitas?), and generally these were more like on-line communities. For the most part you had to self-code the html, and you had to know how to use ftp.

The form is really only about ten years old, but that’s a long time in internet years, and there have been a lot of mutations, but Rebecca Blood’s observations about blogging and journalism remain valid, particularly now that the barriers to entry have essentially disappeared: The weblog’s greatest strength — its uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice — is also its greatest weakness. News outlets may be ultimately beholden to advertising interests, and reporters may have a strong incentive for remaining on good terms with their sources in order to remain in the loop; but because they are businesses with salaries to pay, advertisers to please, and audiences to attract and hold, professional news organizations have a vested interest in upholding certain standards so that readers keep subscribing and advertisers keep buying. Weblogs, with only minor costs and little hope of significant financial gain, have no such incentives.

“The very things that may compromise professional news outlets are at the same time incentives for some level of journalistic standards. And the very things that make weblogs so valuable as alternative news sources — the lack of gatekeepers and the freedom from all consequences — may compromise their integrity and thus their value. There is every indication that weblogs will gain even greater influence as their numbers grow and awareness of the form becomes more widespread. It is not true, as some people assert, that the network will route around misinformation, or that the truth is always filtered to widespread awareness. Rumors spread because they are fun to pass along. Corrections rarely gain much traction either in the real world or online; they just aren’t as much fun.”

What really gets me in all of the events of the past week, though, is how the local media was happy to use Illuzi and his blog as a legitimate news source. They took what he posted and ran with it. But then they turned around and attacked him and all blogs for doing exactly what they just reported as a legitimate news story. This wouldn’t have really gone far if it just stayed on Illuzi’s blog and wasn’t picked up by anyone. The story, or at least the rumors, have been buzzing about for years, but no one ever bothered to follow through on any of it. See, the media has to attack the blogs as evil because blogs are now filling in the gaps that journalists have left open. This used to be the bread and butter of newspapers everywhere, but since television has gained the upper hand, newspapers’ limited resources don’t allow for this resource consuming work anymore. And television is too flashy to get mired in tedious investigations. They have to attack you and all blogs because you scare. It’s easier to do that than to get back to the job they’re supposed to be doing. Now that they’ve said all they needed to say, they can go back and sit by the fax and wait for the next story to fall into their lap.

I thought today’s article was good.