If there was only one thing traditional media could learn from bloggers, it would be that everything changes and it’s almost always for the better.
Blogging is definitely on the uprise, and print journalists are starting to get pushed to the side. Although I don’t think print journalism will ever die (obviously, I already touched on that subject in a previous post), I do think that things will go downhill for print journalism if it doesn’t pick up on a few things.
Scott Karp, a blogger, offers great insight on why journalists should start their own blog. And he’s not the only one. Literally, hundreds of bloggers, even traditional journalists, offer advice and opinions on why journalists should start blogging.
So I think the answer to the question, “What can journalists learn from bloggers?” is easy. They can simply learn to blog.
Like Roy Greenslade said, people are forming cyber communities in which they converse endlessly about their interests, and this makes traditional journalists suspicious because they can’t imagine such a profound change from traditional media. And to make matters even more complicated, journalists point out that there is no perfect example of journalists and bloggers working in harmony. So where do journalists start?
I say start with the blog. If traditional journalists can make that first step, I think they can learn a lot from bloggers, retain their existing audiences and gain new ones. Like I said before, it’s the cool new thing to do, so why not jump on the bandwagon?

Leave a comment
Comments feed for this article