Journalistic bloggery

A blog has won a Polk.

Translated: Long Island University, which gives out the George Polk awards for excellence in journalism, has awarded one to a blogger this year, specifically to Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo for breaking the attorneys general firing scandals. The Polk awards aren’t THE most prestigious awards that a journalist can get, but they’re right up there, so it’s significant that one was awarded to new NEW media instead of established media institutions.

Of course, TPM is about as close to an online newspaper as you can get; it looks like a media, walks like a media and usually quacks like one. So it’s not exactly like LIU awarded a Polk to a teenager’s Facebook diary. But still…

Anybody who’s ever heard me on my “trends in journalism” soapbox has probably also heard me talking about the curious role reversal brought about by blogs and other online content tools: Instead of people talking about what’s in the news, the news is talking about what people write in blogs. Blogs, vlogs, livejournals, etc., have become an increasingly valid news source, probably because they’re written by people who are actually on the scene…to the point that they’re becoming (or, if you ask me, HAVE become) media themselves.

Certainly corporations are capitalizing on this; look at the number of corporate blogs (AKA clogs or bizblogs) that launch products, announce acquisitions, explain decisions, etc.

Of course, flipside to this is the same as the old saw about Satan taking over for God and being forced to assume God’s attributes as well. It’s one thing to speculate with buddies at the watercooler, quite a different thing to be picked up by a major news service as gospel. Like the media, the most popular bloggers may find themselves consulting lawyers, documenting evidence, and trying to protect sources just like “real” journalists. And journalists are using blogs to shortcut good reporting…but that’s a different story.

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