If blogging is part of the new participatory journalism (see the blog of Jay Rosen, Chair of NYU School of Journalism:
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/ ), is a blogger at risk of violating the traditional divide between journalism and activism? Is this an ethical issue, or a postmodern assertion that that divide isn't legitimate? Can a blogger do an activist-oriented post one day, and an objective report another day... thereby alternating roles at whim?
Journalists need to be impartial, objective, fair and balanced. At what point does a journalist become an activist? If a journalist does an investigative piece, it often leads to others acting. Every journalist knows s/he can have that impact. Indeed, not covering a story can lead to community inaction on an issue. It seems somewhat unavoidable.
The "new participatory journalism" is more complex. A few of my blog postings to dKos have led to actions taken by others. I wrote a story about Dean supporters singing The Star Spangled Banner at a rally in Iowa in response to Young Republicans vandalizing rally signs to interrupt the rally (http://susan.dailykos.com/story/2004/1/18/61328/1232 ). My posting was a report of an interesting story. A month later, a member of a gay couple in San Francisco remembered reading my posting and led a group of people in line for marriage licenses in singing The Star Spangled Banner in response to Fundamentalist protesters. Had I become an activist in this instance?
I wrote another dKos posting about the pros and cons of a City resolution on a controversial national topic. A City Council member had asked me for advice. I turned to the dKos community for input. People gave me a lot of feedback, which I then summarized for the City Council member. Last week, our City passed a resolution on the topic. In that case, I clearly used blogging as part of my activism, although my role as consultant to the City Council member was pretty minor.
Other times, my blog postings are commentaries on news I've seen that hasn't already been reported on dKos. For example, I was very interested in the FEC ruling on the new 527 organizations. So, I excerpted a few articles and provided some links to suggest what the outcome of a lawsuit against the 527s might be (see http://susan.dailykos.com/story/2004/3/11/85653/6775 ). That's more traditional journalism -- providing a set of quotes from various attributed sources, and then offering one's opinion. It was clear which sentences were fact and which were opionion.
Your thoughts? Does blogging add a new twist to the journalists as unobjective observers question?