Journalists vs. Bloggers
July 3, 2012 2 Comments 
photo by: photosteve101
The furious debate (ignited by whom?) that involves journalists against bloggers reverberates for some time more than the fireworks during St. John celebrations (to whom that don’t know Turin, St. john is our patron saint, to whom that don’t know St. John http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Baptist).
Lighted up by a never dulled fire, journalists and bloggers arm a sort of cold war, a veiled but felt fight, a conflict that starts with culture and ends with ideology. And that’s a fight that starts with words. Bloggers identify themselves with an English word that has no translation in other languages since it is not needed. “Blog” is the contraction of “Web-log”, “ a diary throughout the net” and it’s easy to understand that in the historical time we are living in, with globalism wrapping every field, boundaries that are no longer the same, and English as the only mean of communication, every type of nostalgic nationalism is an obstacle to the message circulation.
This is the point.
The internet suggests an idea, which is freedom. Freedom of speech, thoughts, actions. An indirect freedom that has got a limit: to cause a paradox. You are not free to say/do/think everything just because the internet exists, you are because you can argue and sustain your thesis with proficiency and maybe style. Since the web offers the opportunity to everyone to discuss and analyze in depth any subject, bloggers are growing heavy with a constraining label: superficial.
It’s easy to slide into stereotypes. Easy to move the debate from a matter of essence to a matter of form. If the blogger was a post office clerk till the day before yesterday (and maybe he still is, since no one can live only on blogging, at least in Italy), the fulcrum of our issue is the lack of skills. Even if it’s true that professionalism doesn’t leave out. More often than we think bloggers are field- labeled, they focus on a subject and filter out news so that they can give back, at least partially, that freedom of information we all care about. Bloggers’ favourite topic setting on journalists is, without any doubt, to accuse them to be a caste. This word implies a long list of prerogatives which press employees would never give up. Their card, for example. Or the commonplace the world of information is a sort of aurea aetas only existing in their minds.
And, being a caste, duties to be subordinate to: one upon all, the headline’s publishing they belong to. When they got involved, journalists answer. Bloggers are field-labelled, as we said before, they don’t check news, they (quite never) run related risks, they cannot have the wide vision of the world which journalists can, confronting each other in a team, in an editorial office. And most of all, “ They don’t think it’s prominent to determine what’s important and what is not, to give a key to reading about the world”. Many thanks to the accurate voice of Maurizio Di Lucchio, journalist, who made compulsory the use of brackets in the last sentence and gave a precise look about a well-known matter to him. Many thanks to the blogosphere too, which gave me the possibility to express an opinion.
Reader Comments (2)
Good point. But I believe that the clash between journalists and bloggers do not make sense. Bloggers are not as journalists, and most of them do not want to be journalists. That's right, they do not control the news, and do not want to do it because their goal is not to write news but sharing opinions. Internet is uprooting, every day, the way we see the world. There is a revolution going on, in which the way we communicate is changing. Journalists should not be afraid of losing their authority on the issues, but will certainly fit to do so in a completely different universe of communication. This is the new millennium. This is the internet.
Good point. But I believe that the clash between journalists and bloggers do not make sense. Bloggers are not as journalists, and most of them do not want to be journalists. That's right, they do not control the news, and do not want to do it because their goal is not to write news but sharing opinions. Internet is uprooting, every day, the way we see the world. There is a revolution going on, in which the way we communicate is changing. Journalists should not be afraid of losing their authority on the issues, but will certainly fit to do so in a completely different universe of communication. This is the new millennium. This is the internet.