Unevenly Distributed

In Journalism vs Blogging, Jon writes:

Over dinner with Steve Fox, editor-in-chief of Infoworld (http://www.infoworld.com), he argued that many consumers don’t make the distinction. He says many people believe journalists are ‘directed’ by advertisers and publishers, as recently shown by the PC World magazine curfuffle. And since television is clearly directed by advertisers (look at product placement on American Idol, for instance), isn’t journallism too? I say no, journalism is an art that will persevere through media change. Blogging is simply opinion, a point of view. Consumers will seek out journalism, not peer blogging.

Classic journalism is deliberate and authoritative. A journalist gets an assignment (or picks one), does research, writes and refines a piece and publishes it.

A typical blog post is incremental, iterative and asynchronous conversation (sort of like this one). Granted that some blog posts look like articles produced by a classic journalist but that’s only because this is a new medium and all the rules and conventions haven’t settled down yet.

Steve’s right - consumers don’t want to make the distinction, instinctively distrust old media and trust new media.

I predict that over time, blog posts will look a bit more like classic journalism and classic journalism with try to co-opt the interactivity of blogging and the two will meet somewhere in the middle. Internet, the great commoditizer, is doing the same thing to other authoritative endeavors like Dictionaries, Encyclopedias and travel agencies.

To paraphrase a favorite quote, The Net considers authority as damage and routes around it.

(Via New York CTO.)