This past weekend an unbelievably uninteresting debate gripped a select group of bloggers, triggered by a post from uber-VC Fred Wilson. Wilson, upset with what he considered to be low caliber blogging by what he calls "journabloggers," or well-funded bloggers who skirt the line between journalism and blogging, called for, well, better journalism by bloggers.
I tuned out much of the debate (see Techmeme for some of the salient back-and-forth), but a lot of the grey areas centered on that perennial question: are bloggers journalists?
Well, one prestigious journalism awards program, the George Polk Awards, seems to think so because today, for the first time ever, a blogger, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, won a George Polk Award for uncovering the politically motivated firing of State Attorneys General by the Bush Administration.
Marshall is a bona fide blogger. He started Talking Points in his apparently tiny DC aparment back in 2000 and now employs a half-dozen full-time journalists. And now he's won a major journalism award. As the Daily News' Will Bunch says, "This is a landmark day for bloggers."
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:29 PM|Comments(1)
Josh Marshall is exceptional. The journalism award is well-earned. Whether he's representative of bloggers as a whole, however, is open to debate. He and his staff do a significant amount of legwork and hard-core reporter digging. Does that match the majority of bloggers?
It seems a bit silly to make distinctions about whole groups. Some bloggers are journalists. Some are not.
Posted by: Mari at February 20, 2008 10:38 AM
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