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Blogs good for democracy

It has been fascinating to listen to fellow journalists anytime someone dares bring up newspaper "blogs" such as this one. You can see them physically stiffen, and then they speak with anger.

"I NEVER read the blogs!" says one Morning News reporter. "That's the stupidest thing the paper has ever done."

A few blocks away, in a conversation with a Tribune reporter regarding a controversial current topic, I asked, "But have your read what your readers are saying about that?"

"No!" she blurts. "No reporter pays any attention to those."

Why the emotional reactions? The answer goes back 500 years. Ever since the first printing press was put to work, the publishers owned a true mass medium. According to Marshall McLuhan, a mass medium is one which produces the maximum message and the minimum feedback.

So it was with Guttenberg; so it used to be with newspapers and TV stations.

(cont. on Reporters Fear Blogs-2)

In the past, only occasional letters to the editor have been published that rebutted a journalist�s view of reality. Now, newspapers and broadcasters alike have virtually given the public access to the largest press in the world � the Internet. And, it�s on the publisher�s own website, no less.

And that�s what is leaving my journalistic friends so uneasy. Now readers and viewers can publically question, criticize, debate, correct, and castigate journalists. What�s more, the critiques appear attached directly to the reporter�s work.

That�s a very uncomfortable experience for someone who has made a living sheltered by the man who buys his ink by the barrel.

But are the news blogs of any use? In their early days in Utah there was a great deal of abuse of the space given to news consumers. Bloggers love their anonymity, and they abused it to name-call and falsify. I think, however, there is a sea change in the morass of opinions flowing out of the hot topics of the day. The differences of opinion seem to be more on point, and though diametrically opposed, arguments have become more logical and less vitriolic.

(cont. on Reporters Fear Blogs-3

So what do reporters have to fear? Only the points of view that they were not aware of or opinions that contradict their own biases.

After all, doesn�t this new public discussion forum provide what the Supreme Court called a �free and robust debate?�