Category: blogging

Is Blogging Journalism?

November 30, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

Someone on Facebook who asked to remain anonymous asked me the following question:

That's a good question. And there's no easy answer.

My view - and there are many views, most apparently more popular than my own - is that the word blogging simply indicates the technology used, just as newsprint paper is typically used for newspapers. Not everything printed on newsprint paper is a newspaper; not everything that uses blog software technology is something I would consider to be writing or journalism.

Frankly, blogging can be whatever a particular blogger wants it to be. If you want to rant online and call political figures names, that would fall under blogging - but it almost certainly wouldn't fall under journalism.

So to answer the question, I need to frame what journalism is, at least for myself. To me, journalism is the reporting of facts and connecting facts in ways that inform people. In this way, blogging can be journalism. Journalism also contains Op-Ed pieces (social commentary is an example), and in this way blogging can also be journalism. But blogging, in and of itself, is not journalism. Blogging is simply a reference to how the information is published. {Read more}