Bloggers are not parasites

This turned out to be a LENGTHY post. To save scrolling from people who want to get on with the next post, I’ve put it all “after the jump.” Also, it’s a real first draft, that just came pouring out, not a carefully considered post, so take that into consideration when posting comments!

The recent Winnipeg Free Press layoffs caused a ripple of soul-searching in the Manitoba corner of the blogosphere. Progressive Winnipeg kicked it off with a “State of the Blog Address” that took a look back at where he got his material:

Myself and most bloggers rely on news sources for our commentary. [My last] post is an example of that. In fact, I have gone through all my posts thus far in 2009 and have, out of 31 posts, 16 that were not based on a newspaper article (or, roughly half). I based two from the CBC and one from the BBC, two from other bloggers.

10 of my 31 posts (or, roughly a third) are commentary on a specific article from a newspaper or are follow ups.

Following this lead, Endless Spin gave it a whirl:

Doing my own test, I found that of the 24 posts I’ve written since the beginning of February, 15 out of 24 were directly based on something I read produced by a mainstream media outlet, while one other one was based on blogger reaction to a news item. Only two of my posts contained any modicum of “original” reporting .

He even does some extra research, citing studies that show 40 to 70 per cent of blog posts in the States reference something originally produced by the mainstream media.

Well, I am not going to put on this hair shirt. I think the “original reporting vs ripping off the mainstream media” dichotomy is a false one.

There is very little original reporting going on in the blogosphere — that much is true. But there’s a heck of a lot of original thinking. That’s because blogging is not the same as reporting; it’s got much more in common with writing an opinion column. I think the reasons for this are plain: writing an opinion is both easier than original reporting, and also, historically, more glamorous in the media.

But also, the very nature of the Internet makes original reporting, paradoxically, less important. Sixty years ago, there needed to be a reporter for each newspaper at the Legislature, or at the White House. Each paper needed its own source for the stories — it was a rare story that relied on the pool reporter. You wanted your readers to get all their information through your company? You needed an independent source for that information.

Not so anymore. Flush with information on today’s web, news consumers no longer follow the one-paper-for-all-my-news model. They pick and choose. And, as they gravitate to the most-popular two or three sources for, say, their national political news, the smaller players drop off the scene. Net negative? Maybe, but it’s what the Internet facilitates — clicking around from news source to news source.

So what does this mean for bloggers? It means as long as there is at least one source for original news, they’re free to link to it, and riff on what it means all they like.

Bloggers should not be confused with reporters. We’re much more like columnists.

That said, it doesn’t address the core issue, which is that news coverage, as it dwindles, leaves less and less to feed the blogosphere’s chatter. Or does it?

Consider the metric that Progressive Winnipeg and Endless Spin used to measure their own reliance on the mainstream media — how many of their posts linked back to or relied on something in the MSM.

Now let’s apply that thinking a little higher on the food chain: How many so-called “original stories” in the newspaper do you think relied on a press release?

After all, make a couple of phone calls to a known critic, take out the PR-flack’s most odious puffery, and you’ve got a bona fide news story from any press release.

I would bet that well over three-quarters of the news in any newspaper is generated in a similar manner. Maybe it’s not as obvious as a press release, but it could be phoned-in a tip, or a court schedule, or a meeting agenda. It’s generated from somewhere outside the newsroom.

Underneath the umbrella of “mainstream journalism” there is a wide range of stories — from rewrites, to chronicling, to reporting, to investigations, to opinions. So far, bloggers have mostly replicated just the opinion stuff. Like I said, it’s both the easiest and the most glamourous. But it also relies on some other people doing the grunt work of generating original stories.

Or does it?

If even three in 10 news stories in any paper are the result of some reporter pounding the pavement, working sources, and digging through things that aren’t merely handed over, I’ll buy a hat just to eat it.

If tomorrow, poof, every newspaper in North America vanished, what do you think would happen to those press releases, those meeting agendas, and those phoned-in tips? I’ll bet before the month was out, every blogger in the world would be getting deluged with them.

Because for every negative story that gets printed about city hall, there’s probably five that are either positive or neutral — and those are stories that city hall still wants to get out.

And bloggers, bet your bottom dollar, wouldn’t miss a beat. They’d go to the city’s website, link to the press release, and write a post about it — same as they do now with a news story.

Is this as good as a “professional journalist” doing his due diligence?

Well, I’ll say “not yet.” But I’m optimistic for the future.

Because if you go back a couple of centuries, before the dawn of what we might recognize as newspapers, what you’ll find is kind of like a low-tech blogging society.

Pamphleteers — often solo and self-financed, or financed by patrons (sometimes political parties) – would publish screeds on the doings of the day. Without any news organizations to reference, they would assume that their audience had at least a partial understanding of the news of the time. If they didn’t, the audience would have to make do by reading between the lines of the pamphleteer’s latest jeremiad.

Gradually, these one-person opinions evolved into early newspapers, and from there into the newspapers that everyone knows, loves, and is getting ready to mourn, even as we link to them.

So I have to think that these early days of blogging will — and I don’t know how — give birth someday to a real new kind of journalism. Maybe it’ll be corporate, maybe there will be ultra-rich “blog barons” who keep a stable of low-paid opinion peons, maybe it’ll be financed by grassroots donors, maybe by non-profit endowments. I don’t know.

But I do know that there’s a hunger for information out there that won’t go away even if newspapers as we know them don’t survive.

And I can see the broad outlines of what blogging may become. The blogosphere is decentralized in a way that the mainstream media is not. They’re collegeal and courteous, by and large, to fellow bloggers. There is an emerging “blog culture” that encourages crediting and building upon the work of others.

There’s still a rush to be first — to get the classic “scoop” — but when you’re talking about minutes or seconds instead of a day, being first is much less important than bringing something valuable to the table.

I like that philosophy. Linking to and building upon the work of others recalls to me the words of Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further than others, it has been because I stood upon the shoulders of giants.”

Bloggers may currently stand on the shoulders of the mainstream media, but I don’t think we’re parasites. I think we’re just trying to peer a little further.