“On the face of it, the question of whether blogs can do journalism is absurd,” considering that “a blog, after all, is just a content management system,” writes Scott Karp in Publishing 2.0.

As he puts it, if a traditional print journalist has a blog within a newspaper, few will question whether he is still a journalist or not.

The answer to the headline question is thus straightforwardly “blogs CAN do journalism.” So the issue at hand is instead whether blogs, by nature, “more powerfully connected the online content ecosystem — will be used by more journalists. And whether more bloggers will start to do what can fairly be considered journalism,” writes Karp.

Karp edges an answer by looking at the fact that gossip site Gawker is now looking for a journalist to become editor of the site, as well as a journalist reporter.

This is the reporter job listing for Gawker:

“At its most basic, the reporting may at times be little more than value-added blogging: a story in the news, put in context with a quick Nexis search, and deconstructed. At its most elevated, the new Gawker hire may experiment with a new form of reporting, unique to online, in which ideas are floated, appeals made to the readers, and the story assembled over the course of several items, from speculation, and tips from users.”

And here lies the answer to the question, can blogs be conducive to journalism? Yes, but to online journalism, with the specificities and singular rules that it is currently developing. Because as Karp noted, the evolution of online journalism will come both from the intent and the relevant CMS, “to develop a web-native form of journalism to distribute on a web-native CMS.”

Source: Publishing 2.0