There are a least 15 books on blogging, probably more, this was a quick search.
There are a fair number of academic papers also.
Some are generalized and some are niche books.
Hugh Hewitt has a niche blogging book out for US religious writers: Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World.
Every Tomorrow has been reading it and is finding it frustrating.
The book has pretty much been a full frontal attack on the mainstream media (or the MSM, the acronym he used and never defined… How come the editors didn’t pick up on that?!?). While I do agree that the mainstream media has a tendency to be biased, slow, redundant, and quite out of touch with reality, I don’t think bloggers are the “new media”, the replacement for the MSM, as Hewitt is suggesting.
Political bloggers are not reporters, they are analysts. On occasion they may take on a reporting role…. For example, the dozens of bloggers who gained blogger status to the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention were reporting on the event… but for the most part, bloggers analyze what the MSM feeds to them, and I would take my chances saying that the political blogging scene would take a very serious blow in regards to content if the MSM were to suddenly vanish off the face of the earth tomorrow. If you look at Hewitt’s own blog, many of the entries reference an article on the website of a MSM source.
There are more reviews at the Amazon link.
Link via: Nowheresville, USA
Published 3 years, 8 months ago
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Hugh Hewitt is a rigid idealogue. The idea that bloggers will replace the “working press” is just so much puffery.
Bloggers (non-professional journalist bloggers) will continue to break some imporant stories, but professional journalists will continue to be the ones who do most of the foot work and hard investigative tasks. Obviously some professional journalists are bloggers, too.
I see, for example, that Joe Carter is proud that he doesn’t read newspapers, but the truth is that much of what he covers is filtered to him by working journalists, including the mainstream media.
Now, I should disclose my bias, that I have an undergraduate journalism degree, even though I didn’t stay with that field. (I might be a better writer, if I had!)
I didn’t get into it in my entry, but one of the other things that was occurring to me as I read it was the fact that the mass public generally doesn’t read blogs. There’s a growing number of people who do, but the majority don’t much less know what they are… (I think you cited a study last month that 62% of Americans didn’t even know what a blog was).
Orginally, I was going to title my entry “Blog: Are We Overvaluing Ourselves Just A Little Bit?” but I decided that it was a bit too harsh… but that’s ultimately how I felt about the book. But then again, I have a twinge of snobbery against the book… He’s a radio show host who’s been blogging a measily two years. What’s he know? I’ve been blogging a little bit over seven.
Maybe I should write a book.
I’m a professional journalist and a blogger as well. I’m really puzzled why some are quick to say that we’re dying, and to put us on the “them” camp in an “us and them” divide when it should all be about working together. Granted, some journalists are also as guilty, putting down bloggers. But I’ve always thought bloggers and journalists should work hand in hand.
The anti-MSM ranting is cant. For all the “MSM are rubbish” rhetoric, how many bloggers would turn down a gig with a mainstream newspaper or tv channel?
Same here, as a journalist I know bloggers won’t be taking the place of MSM. The left/right nonsense coming from evangelicals is foolish, and doesn’t begin to take into account the number of ‘christians’ working in secular media.
As a blogger, it is remotely possible I could break a story. Certainly enhance a story and I’d have no trouble helping any journalist (ie: sars crisis)
It’s such a none issue, did Hewitt write this book to improve his media market?
Interestingly, I completely agree with Richard, some of the bloggers ranting against the MSM would go out of their way to get media attention and I know they would blog about it with great pride.
The public noticing blogs is slowly improving, 37% do, don’t but who is to say they are loooking at blogs thinking they will replace the MSM?
37% could be reading cat blogs.:^)
I’m a blogger but I wouldn’t take a job at a mainstream newspaper or television news source if you paid me (which I presume they’d be doing). Yet not for any ideological reason would I decline the job, but simply because journalism doesn’t interest me in my goals or in my blogging. Just like cat blogs don’t. My blogging would fall under the category of “other” and I get frustrated by all the talk about how blogging is the new journalism; sure, there is some journalism going on (a little). But I don’t think that even 10% of blogs out there (let alone a majority) are even interested in journalistic attempts.