Are Blogs Becoming Respectable And Legitimate?

Here's a personal perspective on the topic. The short answer is yes, of course... blogs have been respectable for a few years now, ever since a few early adapters in traditional media decided to emulate the free-form practice of the innovators and become (their version of) bloggers themselves (Ana Marie Cox is a natural blogger, Joe Klein not so much. Of course, as with TIME, the fastest way to learn how to blog is to hire a blogger (or buy one).

There are some well-established blogs now (both theNY Times and the WaPo have blog index pages. On the NY Times page, you can see blogs ranging well beyond politics, and at WaPo there's both familiar names and awkward formats. Dan Froomkin's excellent White House Watch is listed in blogs (it has comments) but reads more like a column, and the comments are hard to find. Andrew Cohen's Bench Conference will be missed, by the way (without Gonzo to kick around it couldn't have been as much fun to write).

Speaking off the record with more than a few journalist friends, the strong impression one gets is a generational one, with younger reporters embracing the format and older management (and reporters) keeping it at arm's length (I suppose one can generalize the same about readers, based on Pew data).

Moreover, the internet has now become a leading source of campaign news for young people and the role of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is a notable part of the story. Fully 42% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet, the highest percentage for any news source. In January 2004, just 20% of young people said they routinely got campaign news from the internet.

But what's more interesting to me is the way blogs and internet culture have seeped into non-political arenas. One of the more entertaining experiences about setting up the Flu Wiki and accompanying Forum was the reaction from academia, particularly Library Science. In the early days c.2005, there was quite a kerfuffle over the legitimacy of online sourcing (see this archived piece called More mistakes with authority... to get a flavor). We took pains to try and explain the difference between anonymous and pseudonymous (which even today, people have trouble with). The argument and distinction between content as validation vs. credentials is one that will never cease (linked content can be sourced and checked... Judith Miller and Jayson Blair had credentials from a prominent media entity, but not all bloggers, and/or their material, are quality). Three years later, the on line community approach represented by Flu Wiki and others has been validated in multiple ways... invited presentations to CDC and HHS audiences, peer reviewed academic poster presentations, participation on the site by library science folks (who helped organize our links page), links by local government health departments and international media sites, and participation in a government sponsored blog.

Government sponsored blog? Huh. As it turns out, there's a number of them. I knew about the HHS Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog (now archived) because of my participation, and saw Secretaries Leavitt and Chertoff get bitten by the blogging bug (Leavitt's is a far better read, and at times reads as a travelogue).

And recently, I was interviewed by the aids.gov blog, which is an interesting communication experiment, and more open than traditional heavy-handed one-way communication.

Here's my favorite government blog, though, chronicling the Stephen Colbert portrait tour.

Washington... Lincoln... Kennedy... and now Colbert. Just in case a writers' strike and a presidential campaign in full swing weren't enough to keep him busy, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert was determined to have his portrait hang in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). I was looking at some portraits by American artist Thomas Wilmer Dewing at SAAM when I got the call on my cell. I hurried down the hall to NPG to see for myself. From my point of view, the timing was perfect. I needed a drink of water and the framed Colbert was hanging above the water fountains, perilously close to the restrooms.

Colbert's portrait, actually three images in one so it's kind of like a condensed triptych, will hang mere steps away from the exhibition of presidential portraits (as close as he will ever get to an official Washington nod). But only for six weeks. That's when the portrait's expiration date is up, and Colbert may go in search of another home for his likeness. D.C. Museums: you have been warned!

In any case, at a recent emergency preparedness conference I attended, the conversation drifted to new media and its uses. Whereas most of the audience had its doubts about whether blogs and wikis could be depended upon to convey accurate information, the journalist on the panel (along with the bloggers in the audience) had no such doubts. Interestingly, it was citing the government blogs and their existence that was more convincing to the skeptics in the audience (and on the panel). The observation that people say they are more likely to go to non-government sources, along with the obvious point that (even sans approval) people will go to the internet for information didn't hurt the argument that non-government bloggers are part of the conversation, with or without permission.  ;-)

At the same time, similar to how library sciences folks read and contributed to Flu Wiki while others were questioning the validity and legitimacy of the medium, the preparedness posts here at Daily Kos are read by (and sometimes commented on) by emergency managers and health professionals, regardless of skepticism from other quarters. That's certainly true of the flu blogs, which include readers from public health and medicine as well as academia.

So, in a similar vein to Jay Rosen's essay from 2005, I think the issue of legitimacy is over. When the Library of Congress has its own blog, it's time to move on to look at content and not form. It's all about content and links - blogging, (plus or minus bloggers) is now mainstream.

Update [2008-2-17 10:41:25 by DemFromCT]: An example of the rapid response blogs offer in real-time, commenters note to add this:

In particular, DarkSyde's Hurricane Katrina diaries were widely read during the storm and in the immediate aftermath.

I would also add:

This post is a word of thanks to all bloggers for their posts — now more than 200 — helping to keep up attention in this crucial phase of the Tripoli Six trial before the court’s last sitting on 31 October. Here are just two good examples among the many: today The Daily Kos, the world’s largest political blog, and Effect Measure, a progressive science blog, both published updates — see here and here.

In both cases, lives were saved.