Earlier this month, the Associated Press released a set of guidelines for providing credit and attribution to sources that originate news. While this sounds benign and like it’s nothing new, there was some interesting language in the fine print. More precisely, under these guidelines, AP will begin crediting bloggers as sources.
While this is a huge step for online journalism, it ushers in conversations on issues like breaking news, ethics and credibility, to say nothing of delivering yet another blow to already battered newsrooms everywhere.
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It reminds me of a conversation (or shall I say “debate”) my family had about a year ago. We were at my Great Aunt’s 1950’s-era duplex in Shreveport, La. As you gaze around the room you’d be hard-pressed to find empty space – every inch is covered with books, magazines and newspapers. Chances are if you were to open any one of these books or newspapers, you would find the remnants of my Aunt’s red pen – calling out some glaring grammatical error made by the author. See, my Aunt has spent her career in academia and is now a retired professor of English and Literature.
At any rate, my family was sitting around her dining room table – always a venue for lively debate on politics and current events – and we stumbled upon the topic of bloggers. My Aunt was in utter disbelief that so many people were getting their “news” from bloggers. She argued that bloggers were a rogue bunch of amateurs with little to no credibility and that anyone could post anything, and we’d never know fact from fiction.
Being the lone Millennial at the table, I had to speak up. I argued the “anyone/anything” theory actually enhanced journalism because it delivers an Egalitarian approach to reporting the news. The barrier of entry is so low, we’re able to not only get niche reporting, but we’re also able to get it on a hyperlocal level.
Then, I shifted focus to her credibility argument, and rebutted with a question: “What makes a print or TV news outlet ‘credible’?” The consensus around the room was something along the lines of “a consistent track record of accurate reporting.”
I pleaded that we needed to give this concept of bloggers reporting the news some time. After all, who knew, for example, that the Wall Street Journal would be “credible” when it launched back in 1889? The advantage we have now, however, is that online communities are pretty darn good at regulating themselves. If there is a whiff of false or unethical news reporting – that “source” is discredited almost immediately and word of this travels online, virally. And while I’ll never be sure who won the debate that day, the conversation certainly raised some great questions.
What about you? Are you cool with bloggers reporting the news? What implications do you think it has on how we receive our news? Comments are open…
