Why do they hate bloggers?
If you read political or news blogs, you probably heard last month about the White House Press Corp slamming bloggers (in particular “political” bloggers), and I mentioned some time back how ABC’s Brian Ross went to great lengths to claim he is a “journalist and not a blogger,” even though his segment known as “The Blotter” is published as a TypePad Blog.
Now the latest in this stream of “journalists” needing to puff out their own chests on how they are so superior to bloggers comes from Scott Anderson of the St. Louis Dispatch. It is almost comical when you read something like:
I don’t understand why we celebrate the growth of blogs. It seems to me that they are just another expression of our fascination with our own opinions. We are fast becoming a nation of Sayers, rather than Doers.
For all the hype about interactivity, blogs are first and foremost the epitome of one-way chatter. You can sit at your computer and spew a stream of consciousness. You can chuckle at your own funny lines, pat yourself on the back for a pithy comment, stand up and shake your fist while driving your point home.
I have what I hope is a helpful suggestion for bloggers: Instead of just sitting inside your house and commenting on the world around you, why don’t you, um, get up and leave? There is a whole non-cyber, non-virtual place waiting for you and your opinions. It’s called the world.
I guess maybe if we all stop blogging, we could get a job as a hack opinion journalist, who sits in front of computer and spew streams of consciousness, chuckle at out own funny lines, and pat ourselves on the back, how we are doing it at some newspaper, rather than doing from home.
I really don’t get it. Are these so called professionals, really so afraid of bloggers making them irrelevant that they need to lash out at every opportunity?
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I would never consider myself a journalist and – though bloggers typically give their opinions, both freely and are paid for it – I always thought journalists were paid to report “objectively.”
Then again, I’m only a mommyblogger – what do I know?
Katie Couric’s anchor job will be mine someday. MINE! I tell ya’.
[...] have noted this before, back when the White House Press Corp. went on this little bender attacking blogs. Now, and this [...]