By By Eric Allen, News Staff
Jessica Wilcock’s fingers, primed on the keyboard of her MacBook, are as relentless as the wind outside. It’s cold out, so Wilcock, a middler architecture major, is tucked away at afterHOURS:’ with dim lighting made dimmer by the black walls; soft jazz that’s somewhat audible over a pervasive, gentle murmur of students’ voices; the smell of Starbucks lingering in the air ‘- in short, a perfect refuge from the weather.
She writes’ like she’s on assignment, but her text reads like a letter to a close friend ‘- or an entry in her diary.
‘As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, it seems like everything’s already drawing to a close. I already had my mid-review for the library I’ve been working on in my studio,’ she writes.
She explains, in detail, the process by which her architectural plans are critiqued in class.
But what she’s writing is visible to anyone with an Internet connection; Wilcock is a blogger commissioned by Northeastern. Her manifesto is to give prospective students a glimpse at what to expect from the school, she said.
Wilcock’s blog is personal for a reason ‘- it’s a way for the university to inform incoming students about campus life in a way even a carefully laid-out brochure could not.
‘They really want to show a day in the life [of a Northeastern student],’ she said.
Blogs like Wilcocks were the first signs of a new world in the ’90s that has come to be known as the ‘blogosphere,’ expanding to incorporate ‘- and potentially redefine ‘- journalism. Blogs have since added to the universal lexicon, like a technological lingua franca, with words like ‘blog,’ which translate exactly the same into French and Spanish, some experts said.
Technorati.com, a blog search engine that collects and analyzes data from ‘the online global conversation,’ has indexed 133 million blogs since 2002. New additions pop up every day.
Blogs can be found in conjunction with even the most traditional media sources. The New York Times boasts 65, all reporting to niche audiences on topics as varied as life in Iraq to the New York Rangers to world chess updates.
The Internet allows for the demand of instant information, a need that bloggers fill nicely. But anyone can make themselves a blogger and forego the editing process, publishing material that is virtually unchecked.
Blogger Matt Drudge leaked news of former president Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinski in 1998 on his popular website, Drudgereport.com. Newsweek magazine, which some say caught wind of the story first, reportedly chose not to publish it because of ethical considerations. And earlier this year, Drudge broke news of Prince Harry’s military service for England, although the English media had universally agreed not to report his active duty in order to protect him.
The so-called ‘citizen journalism’ that has risen from the blogopshere, extending editor privileges to anyone and everyone, has blurred the world of media, allowing independent bloggers the freedom to report whatever they chose, without vationsn, some media professors said.
‘A lot of bloggers are spreading misinformation,’ said Deb Aikat, media futurist and associate professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. ‘Some bloggers have really diluted the ethical standards of the media. Anybody can be a journalist. The Internet is a medium without gatekeepers.’
Even bloggers like the cowboy-boot-and-scarf-clad Wilcock, who create a world that’s reader-oriented, are redefining journalism with the expectation of more personalized news, and altering the role of reporting.
State of the blogosphere
Blogs were not originaly meant as an alternative way to spread news. Their trajectory has mapped an interesting evolution from individual to institutional, but not without far-reaching consequences, said Liz Matson, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern who teaches a class on online journalism.
‘The first blogs were more techie-oriented,’ she said. ‘Eventually, the format started to get picked up. There’s so much happening, so many little things going on. It gives writers a place to put their stuff.’
Blogs transformed from limited ‘techie’ tools into online templates for journal keepers, and finally into a no-holds-barred form of reporting, she said. Personal blogs are still around ‘- in fact, they constitute most of the blogosphere. But combined with blogs that exist solely to report, they are having subtle effects within the sphere of journalism.
‘I had a LiveJournal account,’ said Adrianne Loggins, a graduate student studying journalism, and author of AL’s Blog. ‘Starting out, I used it as a source to spew everything I kept in. I would blog about daily affairs, stuff on my mind.’
What she’s describing is one of the earliest resources for bloggers:’ a journal kept in real time online, established in 1999. Some experts said the trend has since blossomed into an overabundance of social networking sites available online, including more recent incarnations with a focus on writing, like Blogger, a Google service.
Loggins is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism and has decided to swap the diary approach in favor of material that a professional reporter might generate on the fly. She said she made her decision independently, but reflects a change in the blogosphere that will likely continue to occur.
About eight percent of American Internet users, or 12 million adults, have a blog, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit market research group. Out of 7,012 bloggers surveyed, the project reports that 34 percent, or about 2,385 bloggers, consider what they do a form of journalism, rather than a form of personal expression. In turn, these non-professional journalists have created a network of Internet-savvy readers and established Internet-based tends, which the traditional media has had raced to keep up with.
‘The way you can comment on other people’s blogs ‘- it creates a community,’ said Mark Glaser, executive editor of Media Shift, a PBS guide that tracks changes in media as a result of new trends in newspapers, television, radio and journalism. ‘I think the mainstream media realized this, because of all this competition from blogs. People go to websites now expecting to have more interaction with writers. It makes a lot of sense for any media outlet to say, ‘Let’s take our reporters and give them blogs if they want them and they can come out from behind their bylines.”
Matson said that’s what newspapers have done with the advent of the blogosphere.
‘Some newspapers started to get interested in blogging. They thought, ‘Let’s try this,” she said.
The visibility of blogs is undeniable, but the consequences of an unchecked forum for ideas have left the media landscape a different place.
Contemporary bloggers
When Rick Sawyer moved to Boston a year and a half ago, he started blogging for Bostonist, one of the many regional sister blogs of a New York page he’d been frequenting:’ Gothamist. The site offers some news analysis, but mostly serves to entertain readers with parochial posts.
‘I did this series of 800-to 1,200-word stories about local area clubs called ‘The Joiner,” Sawyer said. ‘The editors liked the idea; it took me all over the place.’ said his series featured a new club organization in piece, like the New England Science Fiction Association or Boston Atheists.
Now Sawyer is the editor of Bostonist, and said he recognizes his position as a blogger has advantages in a world where the media has become mercurial.
‘By writing for Bostonist, I met a woman who recommended me for my full-time job,’ Sawyer said. ‘It’s a good way to come up with a portfolio, and a good portfolio. I put it on my resume. It’s more or less like a part-time job ‘- I recruit writers, edit copy, come up with headlines.’
Sawyer notes there is a difference between bloggers and reporters:’ ‘I don’t get paid a whole lot,’ he says.
Despite a difference in compensation and a designation as a professional reporter, Sawyer said at Bostonist, they’re serious about the same things trained journalists are, like plagiarism and libel. Reporting news via the Internet spurred a whole subset of blogs that take the standards of reporting seriously, which in turn, challenges other news outlets.
Dan Kennedy, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern, said he sees independent bloggers as one facet of the media that augments traditional journalism.
‘There are some really gifted bloggers out there. Very few of them are putting out new information ‘- they point out things you may have missed,’ he said. ‘Citizen journalism can be a terrific way of having a person’s eye view of what’s going on.’
Kennedy, dressed in a striped shirt and patterned tie, is also a blogger.
‘I literally do it for my own amusement,’ he said of his blog, Media Nation, which overs local, national and international media. ‘It is an important calling card for what I’m doing.’
Whether it is for the therapy of journal writing or the edge of listing a blog on your
resume, many blog for their own personal benefit. But the popularity of blogging has attracted a new audience that sees a different potential.
The blogosphere redux
‘The ability to collect information has become more and more difficult,’ said Janet Eden-Harris, vice president of JD Power and Associates, a global marketing information service. ‘Blogs are useful because they are public. You can get tons of thousands on a particular topic. There is a continuous spike in [the number of] blogs.’
Eden-Harris is the former CEO of Umbria, a marketing analysis company that analyzes social media, and reports trends to clients. Umbria was acquired by JD Power and Associates in 2008.
The original concept for Umbria was to mine ‘unstructured text’ for data that could be repackaged for clients and provide insights into potential sales demographics, Eden-Harris said.
‘The original incarnation of the product was in the form of a portal,’ she said. ‘What it lacked was the ability to have a story to tell.’
Now the company is able to paint a picture of potential consumers with the developing blogosphere.
‘People are becoming more attuned to the fact that this isn’t a classic outreach medium,’ she said. ‘We can appeal to customers by their specific needs.’
It’s the needs of the individual that are causing changes in the way media is delivered, Aikat said.
‘There are two things happening in media right now. One:’ The average customer has a lot more choices,’ he said, expanding not just on blogs, but the array of multimedia available today. ‘Two:’ A lot of people have lost interest in the traditional format of the media.’
These are changes that aren’t slowing down, and have altered the state of the media permanently.
‘I think overall, it’s been good for the mainstream media to get into blogging,’ said Media Shift’s Glaser. ‘They can create more content, more loyalty and more interaction. [Blogging] is becoming kind of a commodity. It’s become a part of the culture.’
Similarly, Matson said the role of traditional media in the blogosphere must be proactive.
‘All print people are going to have to be multimedia people too,’ she said. ‘Eventually it will just be multimedia companies that do it all.’
Until then, Matson said traditional media need to do all it can to keep up with the times.
‘It’s important to be a part of what’s happening,’ she said. ‘Journalism is changing.’
