Illinois Issues has logged onto the blogosphere.
Bethany Carson, our Statehouse bureau chief, launched the magazine's first online journal, known as a Web log, blog for short, just in time to track the scheduled end of this spring's legislative session.
In the short run, her daily posts will enable us to bridge the information gap between this edition and our upcoming May issue. In the months to come, her weekly posts will enable us to offer eyewitness accounts of policy deliberations at the state Capitol, along with a front-row seat on some of the political gamesmanship. This more casual, personal, even idiosyncratic, style is not often appropriate in the pages of the magazine, or even on our Web news page.
"We'll use our blog as a way to keep up-to-date information available at your fingertips, with the intention to clear up misinformation, not add to the rumor mill," Bethany writes in the welcome to her blog.
As is the case with many other news organizations, an editor will get a look at Bethany's post before the rest of the world does. And while readers will be encouraged to message her, their responses won't be part of her blog.
I recognize that, for most bloggerati, such restrictions violate the form and spirit of this still emerging medium. Yet, without adaptation, a blog could end up being antithetical to the magazine's stated mission to provide in-depth information and insight about Illinois government and politics. We do, however, see an online journal as a chance to enhance that mission and extend our reach.
Yet, without adaptation, a blog could end up being antithetical to the magazine's stated mission to provide in-depth information and insight about Illinois government and politics.
In short, some thought went into creating this blog. There's a history behind this go-slow approach to our stewardship of the magazine, which has for three decades plus practiced what some New Media theorists say they want: nonprofit public service journalism.
A few years ago, the magazine's staff considered what might be gained or lost in creating our first Web site. A top concern, as it has been with most magazines and newspapers, was whether an electronic edition would undercut the printed edition. In the end, we agreed that any risks were outweighed by the value of reaching more readers with a portion of each monthly issue. Since then, we have grown to appreciate our ability to track breaking news in the electronic format.
We hope to make that site more interactive in the future by offering our readers a chance to explore significant policy questions for themselves.
But even a seemingly simple blog raises some fundamental questions. In a sense, the blogosphere is merely an advance in communications technology. Yet it really is far more than that — or could be. Taken to a logical extension, this latest means of disseminating news has the potential to transform the traditional relationships among news sources, news producers and news consumers, argue David Kline and Dan Burstein.
These authors, both journalists and businessmen, examine this possibility in depth in blog! how the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture. If the sources and the consumers begin to produce the news, what then?
As a journalist who came of age 40 years ago, I know past efforts to democratize the gathering and distribution of news can and has helped to improve the craft and, to some extent, the institution of journalism.
But as an editor and former reporter in what bloggers call "the mainstream media," I know that journalists, at their highest purpose, must select from an endless stream of random facts precisely those the citizenry needs, then synthesize them in a way that makes their meaning clear. This takes work, by journalists and citizens.
As for blogs, I'm just old enough to think that reading many of them is akin to perusing the postings on a stranger's refrigerator door. However amusing or insightful the separate scraps, it's often hard to see what, if anything, they add up to.
Yet the potential for improving journalistic practices and reaching more and different kinds of citizens can't be dismissed. And, in our own pages, Illinois Issues has assessed the impact of blogs on political discourse. (See "Brave new medium," June 2005, page 25.)
In blog!, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, a blogger himself, argues the "battle" between reporters and bloggers is over anyway. "Now, bloggers are being led towards journalism and journalists are being led towards blogging. One of the primary reasons for that is that the ideal blogger is somebody with a journalist's skill.
"Journalists are very well adapted to the blogging form."
But Rosen believes there's work to be done. "There is also a profound and fascinating question that needs to be answered: What does the weblog form bring to daily journalism? There is so much potential with the powers of the Net, particularly the horizontal communication that the Internet makes possible for a vertical form like journalism. We don't know how to do that yet. We don't know how open-source journalism should work. We don't know how to fund it. We don't know how to organize it. All that work lies ahead."
We aim to explore some of these questions ourselves in the months ahead. In the meantime, we invite our readers to check out Bethany's blog.
To blog or not to blog?
Blogging has the potential to re-engage citizens and re-energize journalists. This, in essence, is the theme of blog!, a balanced introduction to what authors David Kline and Dan Burstein, journalists and bloggers themselves, call "one important wave of innovation that is contributing to restoring the lost voice of the ordinary citizen in our culture." Their book was published last year by CDS Books, in association with Squibnocket Partners LLC.
The blogosphere is not without its problems, they agree. Many bloggers spread gossip and trivia. Most are heavily reliant on the "mainstream media."
But blogs are self-correcting. They turn stones journalists step over. They can mobilize an army of unpaid experts eager to fact-check obscure information on short notice. And, facing a far more unforgiving marketplace than most journalists, the quality blogs rise while the rest flop.
Still, some 40,000 new ones are created each day, according to these authors.
They don't predict the future of blogging, though they invite practitioners and theorists to do so. The most compelling assessment is that journalism and the blogosphere will meet in the middle. The best bloggers will adopt some journalistic standards and the best journalists will relearn the value in connecting with citizens.
Peggy Boyer Long
Peggy Boyer Long can be reached at Peggyboy@aol.com.
Illinois Issues, April 2006
