Some bloggers think they will raze the existing media establishment and replace it with something new. Some journalists think they can simply ignore the arrival of blogs as a new many-to-many news channel. Both groups are missing the reality of today's media ecosystem.

Good bloggers keep good journalists honest; good journalists read blogs and find sources and stories. There's constant foot traffic across this border.

Trouble arises when people don't step across the line. CBS could have saved itself a lot of trouble if, as Jay Rosen suggested, it had someone "in charge of reading the Internet and sending alerts" -- if, in other words, it had its own blogger. Instead, the network hunkered down behind an institutional stonewall and acted as though it could safely ignore the "amateurs in pajamas" who had raised legitimate questions about the evidence it had posted.

Similarly, bloggers do themselves and their readers a disservice when they view professional journalists as an impersonal enemy, a corporate monolith to be pelted with stones. That stance simply closes down the border. If you think the pros should be paying attention to the blogosphere -- and they should -- then imagining them as reasonable and diverse individuals is a good way to start the conversation.

The rise of blogging has opened up a wide, rich new channel of information and perspectives from people who previously had no publishing platform. But it doesn't offer any guarantee that truth will prevail. It's not as simple as "We can fact-check your ass." Sometimes, the distributed fact-checking of the blogosphere works well (as in the CBS Guard memos saga); in other cases, it breaks down (the clear facts that discredit the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" -- facts assembled mostly by newspaper pros -- haven't made much difference, and the blogosphere, split ideologically, hasn't been able to help make the facts stick).

Getting facts out fast and right is only part of the dynamic of media/blog interaction. The rest is all about relationships -- and respect.

The challenge for professional journalists today is to understand how their role has changed. Their readers and their sources and their subjects now have access to an open microphone. And much of the time, it's good stuff on that mike -- amazing stories and smart people and valuable information. Ignoring all that isn't just a missed opportunity; it's bad journalism. Only a hack could believe that ignoring the "amateurs in pajamas" is a smart course.

Bloggers, meanwhile, lose out if they choose to stand off and lob spitballs at the media machine instead of engaging with it in creative ways. They have an unprecedented chance to insert new information and ideas into the clotted and previously inaccessible media bloodstream. Blogging for its own sake is its own reward, to be sure. But blogging to set records straight and change minds and influence the public sphere -- that's too valuable to pass on.

# Posted by Scott Rosenberg on 9/22/04; 9:21:24 AM - --