Is today’s blog modelled on yesterday’s newspaper?

Who do you think can be called a journalist?

There are those who think that “real” journalists sit in offices, publish impressive layouts and have been credited with a sense of trust. It is this notion of credibility and trust that has got people debating about whether citizen journalism is a valid form of journalism.

However, if we go back to the creation of newspapers, we’ll find that those now large corporations once grew out of small groups, families and individuals of concerned citizens who wanted their voices heard. For instance, the New York Herald was founded in 1835 as an American newspaper that proclaimed complete political independence, which was different to other newspapers during that time.

Although, blogs are different to traditional ideas of journalism. Bloggers may not have all of the skills, or know-how, or the contacts that professional journalists have, but they do offer something more. Their opinions generally aren’t restricted by their editors or seniors because they have none. And they have the capacity to simply offer what they believe and contribute to public discussion in new and innovative ways (even if this isn’t always the case).

What I’m trying to say is that both blogs and newspapers originated with people, who wanted to publicize their views and be heard in the public domain, and it is only right that those who discredit blogs and citizen journalists begin to see that.

Here’s a great video explaining what exactly ‘citizen journalism‘ is.

Murdoch versus Google

I just thought that I’d share that Rupert Murdoch launched an attack on Google and other search engines for stealing content last week.

Murdoch and Tom Curley (executive of AP) claim that Google is making money by using their content and running them out of business.

Yet, you have to wonder, are their complaints legitimate? If all that Google and other search engines are doing is linking to AP and News Corp. stories and providing people with brief teasers and headlines and then directing them to the newspaper website’s full story once clicked, then what did Google steal?

In fact, if AP and News Corp really didn’t want to be listed on Google searches, then all they’d need to do is type in a few keys and their sites would be removed and robots would be prevented from crawling their websites in the future.

Perhaps AP and Murdoch didn’t know that they could remove their websites from Google or maybe they do. Maybe the reason why they haven’t taken action to remove their websites from search engines is that search engines are doing news organizations a favour in providing some free traffic.