Notes on the Blogging Business

By borges, Section Post Office
Posted on Wed Jun 20, 2007 at 06:00:26 AM CST

Writing for a blog is kind of odd work. It is not journalism for the most part, but a something-else. What that might include is evolving as more people engage in personal, political and community blogging. WPR inteviewed Scott Gant, former counsel for The New Republic and author of "We're All Journalists Now" (The Free Press.) That program (audio stream of it is here) questioned whether bloggers and filmmakers should be considered journalists. Mr. Gant maintained that the traditional role and definiton of a journalist must be re-examined. Meanwhile a Wisconsin blog called Crawfordstake posted a brief_piece about "if you are paid to blog, you aren't a blogger." This one caught my eye, since no one associated with KickTime is paid and as far as I can tell no one will ever be paid to produce content here. So is that good?

I think it is important that there is an outlet for community voice and announcement that is not tied to a sponsor. Once money enters the equation the message gets distorted, or at least limited. I believe grassroots volunteer blogging will catch on, and as it catches we will prevail as an important part of what is necessary to maintain a democratic society that has been all but bought from politicos to journalists. Some journalists complain about lack of accountability in the blogosphere (I really do hate that word)--we don't use "real" names, switch identities, change content at will, and are not "real" journalists. Follow on to the full story to get my take on these issues...

The issue of names is complicated. I could--or any of you for that matter could--make up a username and pose as a real person. It is a limit of the internet that identities are questionable. What emerged early in the history of the web (or do you remember CB radio handles?) was the custom of using an alias that helped to create a persona. This is something larger than life, yet expresses some part of the person at the keyboard. Whether the persona is credible is proved over time. People come to trust KickTime to give accurate information, worthy commentary, tasteful presentation of arts and culture--or they don't trust us in this way. People return to see what borges has posted or look in anticipation for Mocha's next piece--or they have a poor opinion of their work and do not return. So you build credibility or you do not. Having multiple identities is not a good way to establish credibility, so I stick to borges and let it fall where it does.

A second point on relative anonymity is that this is supposed to be about the Kickapoo Valley region and not a person. This is not designed to be borges' blog, it is a community blog. So not having too much identity in it can be looked at as a strength and opportunity for others to step up and be heard. At another extreme is total anonymity which is clearly destructive. Any time spent at the mwt bulletin board, or the comments on newspapers that allow anonymous posting quickly reveals the failure of that model.

Another common complaint of journalists is that they have something on paper and it cannot be changed, whereas on a blog any post can be updated and corrected. Usually this is done in brackets, with a date and who is changing the information. I like this ideal in theory, but when I misspell something or have a name wrong I like to just correct it so people visiting in future will have a better read. I should probably own up to the mistakes, but if it is not a big mistake I am probably just going to make it right.

And the last issue is that bloggers are not journalists and are leading to the decline of mainstream media (MSM). There is no doubt paper newspapers are under stress and bloggers depend on MSM for content to react to, details to fill the gap. And yet there is a range of work and a range of definitions that muddy the discussion. I would agree though looking back at the two years of KickTime there has not been much pure journalism. This platform is particularly good at linking to journalistic efforts (local/national/international) and juxtaposing them. One might call it "meta-news". We are good at lifting up news that seems relevant to this area that might be missed. We bring the world to your computer with interesting links and music, new ideas. Most importantly we provide some motivation for you to get up and do something...go see a concert, protest something, call that council person or representative with your concern--armed of course with facts that can be gleaned from these pages, that might also (probably) link to MSM sources.

So we are not doing much journalism, hopefully not undermining MSM, but there is much we can do and our strength is not having commercial constraints. We just have to deal with you, the readers. The next step is for some of you readers to wade through the technical aspects of this site and submit your view on life in the Kickapoo Valley. We will enrich each other as more people find the time and patience to take part in this evolving experiment of democratic broadcasting.