Journals are far more personal. It's your daily life, about the way things affect you. It's complaining about your cat and your family not getting along, it's about how you thoguht a guy on the bus was funny.
A blog is different. It's about issues and subjects and things you've been thinking on; long, drawn out discussions. Admittedly, I don't use my blog as much as my journal. I need to actually think about what's put in there, because I don't want to sound like an idiot. Talking about performing personalities, though. You do that every time you write a blog post. I don't swear in those. I swear ALL THE TIME in real life.
Mind you, my blog is mostly personal. I don't cover anything huge. Other blogs do, however. they often collaborate (or in some cases rival) news media. In the case of ONTD They sometimes get the scoop before Perez Hilton, who is another well known blogger. The difference between ONTD and Perez, aside from quality of reporting, is the fact that ONTD is a group effort, with many bloggers.
But blogs, as a whole, are more social. With a journal, you have your set friends and you write entries based on what you feel comfortable about them reading. Blogs can be commented on by anyone, be they nasty, nice or somewhere inbetween. This sharing of public information (and it's the public bit that's important)brings people together to discuss specific topics far better than any private journal could.
Some blogs, while while just for fun, manage to gain and audience of thousands. ONTD has an official member list of 50,000 and an official watcher list of 50,000, although the actual number of people visiting is much higher. A blog is a collaborative media, regardless of whether one person is doing the posting or if 50,000 people are. Bloggers, however, aren't the same as journalists.
A journalist has a much harder job. They need to actually get out there and find things out. Get in people's faces. Have things thrown at them. Get kicked, punched, spat on. A blogger takes the news that the journalist has posted and re-posts it for discusstion. I'm being very, very narrow minded here, however. I realise that bloggers do a lot of their own research. And I do realise that a lot of the time, they do their own reviews and things of movies, television, gadgets and games. Cooking bloggers cook their own food etc etc.
In Blogs of War: Weblogs as news, Melissa Well goes into the subject a little more in depth. Okay, a lot more in depth than I'm going. For exmaple, the abstract says
This article examines current events weblogs or blogs that were particularly active during the second US war with Iraq, in the spring of 2003. Analysis suggests that theseblogs are a new genre of journalism that emphasizes personalization, audience participation in content creation and story forms that are fragmented and interdependent with other websites. These characteristics suggest a shift away from traditional journalism’s modern approach toward a new form of journalism infused with postmodern sensibilities.
Honestly, the article is worth a read, if you can get your hands on it. Very dry, but worth a read.
I feel that the subject is far too broad for me to go into all over the place, but I will think on it.
1 comment:
really interesting thoughts Jess:)
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