Media Issues

Bloggers Freer Than Reporters? And Vice Versa

This article written by Jack Shafer is about how bloggers are replacing journalists. Bloggers tend to be journalist but they do not know they are actually embracing themselves because of poor skill and professionalism. Blogging is the ‘new national pass time’ (Shafer 2005). The article stresses the fact about how journalism is a ‘learned skill’ and its ‘experiences counts’ (Shafer 2005).

Bloggers tend to be parasites which can not exist without the main stream media. Shafer is very annoyed with bloggers because they write whatever they want to and they are learning how to be a professional journalist. He wants to reason out why journalism is important and how it is meant to be.

This article can be a serious discussion. If bloggers are becoming smarter by learning how to write as a journalist will they replace journalists in future? People will tend to read blogs rather than newspapers because blogs may be as ‘accurate as the average daily papers’ (Shafer 2005).

The occupation of journalists may be violated replaced by amateur’s bloggers. However, bloggers do not get paid unlike journalists. If blogger replaces journalists then there would not be newspapers, anyone can create news, news will not be creditable, there will be chaos. The main issue here is that blogging should have a guide or a style guide that will assist bloggers on the right format on how to blog. There should be a limit for blogging so that it will not affect the media as a whole.

Can you imagine your next door neighbour has a blog and she writes about the gossips that takes place at your neighbourhood? Talk about desperate housewife.