In the past, there has been much debate as to whether bloggers could be considered journalists and what the distinction meant. Regardless of the possible answers, in today's context, blog editorial practices have influenced those of traditional news media online - whether it's writing styles, tones or formats.

"Blog pioneers, those 'non-journalists', have revolutionized our approach to news," writes Benoit Raphaël, who blogs and is editor-in-chief of LePost, an experimental UGC venture launched by Le Monde interactif. Many of aspects described below are currently being tested at LePost.

Here's his list of 10 things that bloggers did that fundamentally changed media's approach:

- Conversation: there are now few newspaper sites that haven't opened their articles to comments and conversation. "A story, nowadays, is not only the journalist's article but the article + the feedback from readers," write Raphaël.
- Perfectible news: as a consequence of conversation, online articles are now constant works in progress. There are pros and cons though. Among the negatives, journalists can be tempted to publish improperly checked content.
- Buzz: born with blogs, all online journalists must now be aware of online buzz.
- News without a hierarchy or anti-chronological news: an increasing number of sites such as 20minutes and Le Figaro are now including news feeds, which list news items as they come in, in reverse chronological order. But nearly all traditional media sites continue to set a hierarchy to their news.
- Indexation: because of the structure of blogs, bloggers had to be good at search engine optimization when writing headlines and such, in order to make their content visible. These concerns now also affect journalists. Although "this doesn't mean that journalists must only write to be referenced," write Raphaël.
- Trampoline news: not all news articles need to be long-winded, or on the contrary, be held within a limited amount of space. With blog news, postings can be lengthy and complex, but also simply link back to external content.
- Aggregation: many blogs don't produce original content - they simply refer and point to existing content. Simply look at the Huffington Post, which has been built around aggregation.
- Lists: it's an extremely simple and efficient editorial format that is widespread in the blogosphere...
- Layered writing: thanks to hyperlinks, but also infographics, videos and more, articles can be written to be seemingly shorter, but they actually point to more in-depth layers of related content.
- A new tone: the tone of conversation.

There are certainly other fundamental ways in which bloggers may have changed traditional media coverage online. But few online journalists would still deny that blogs haven't influenced - improved - their own journalistic practices on the Web.

Source: Demain tous journalistes (link in French)