An Evolution From Journalism To Blogalism

It's important to remember that what we understand journalism to be now isn't always what journalism was, not even close, if you take it back to its green beginnings. How it is now, the format and structure of it was born of certain logistical necessities related to print, and later, broadcast; but media is changing, and in a big way, again.

The earliest journalists in America, armed with a printing press and Constitutional protection made no pretense of objectivity; in some communities, reports by today's standards would be considered outright libelous, myopic, and sensational. The goal was then, as it always has been, to sell stories the public wanted to read.

Whether they be about rumors of witchcraft, sightings of public debauchery, or accusations of questionable lineage, the early days of journalism were often little more than unfounded and unfair gossip.

The Associated Press itself was formed to reign in the madness of competing journalists, all of them racing each other in rowboats out into New York Harbor to squeeze every last drop of Old World information from immigrants before they could even disembark into the New World. Rowboats, waves, and large ships are a deadly combination.

Unionized or not, there was still competition between newspaper magnates, names we revere today, Pulitzer and Hearst, scratching at each other with ridiculous headlines to build empires of pennies.

But eventually that madness subsided, for the better part of a century, and the news business became not only routine, but entrenched, elite, and virtually unchallenged.

chunk of said Power, it has lost much of its ability to hold Power accountable.

So how does journalism survive itself in the age of New Media? The way it has in ages past, the way everything survives: it adapts. In Owen's aforementioned post, he recommends journalists become, or at least mirror their greatest threat.

Think, behave, report like a blogger – while, somehow, keeping with your standards and practices, your professional pedigree, your certifications, your piece of paper that says you know what you're doing. Adopt, understand, and use the new technology before you. But above all, you must engage the audience where the audience is, and come down from your marble hill.

The dust of the Wild West settles eventually, and when it does, the successful ones will have taken the storm in stride, even added bits of it to their arsenal. The world is changed again, an you must change with it.