Is Blogging Journalism?

Tim Ireland at bloggerheads.com reports today on Adam Macqueen of Private Eye, and the policy of the magazine not to credit blogs.

Briefly bloggerheads published a scoop, Private Eye contacted Ireland to request more information then published the story minus Ireland’s credit. As Ireland points out:

This, after years of mocking/castigating other print titles for lifting material from websites without permission or credit; the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Allegedly the view of Private Eye is that they are “not in the habit of crediting websites with only a few hundred hits”.

Despite having some journalism training, and adhering to the same ethics and rules as my journalist friends, I would be the first to say that this blog is not journalism. However, were I uncover a story about misdemeanours perpetrated by my local council, conducted research and then publish a story about it on this blog, I’d be more than a little annoyed if my local paper, or Private Eye or whoever lifted this story without credi

Is blogging journalism? I’d say, yes it is given that a blog is merely a method of distribution and not a discipline in its own right.

Many independent blogs, (Guido Fawkes and Liberal Conspiracy for example), carry out reporting and research that is in all respects equal to that of old media organisations. Meanwhile traditional newspapers are hardly the model of good practice, consider the leader on today’s’ Daily Express “100 REASONS WHY GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL”. Consider the story in The Express covering the now teenage classmates of the Dunblane Massacre students. Or the Daily Mail HPV Vaccine campaigns.

Journalists can be bloggers. Bloggers can be journalists. As the above examples prove, if we condemn blogs for poor research, standards and ethics we must hold up the old media newspapers to the same expectations.