TMV always applauds the efforts of bloggers that take this truly exciting new medium beyond its day-to-day role as a kind of glorified big Internet op-ed page — and instead do original reporting. Various enterprising bloggers of varying viewpoints have done original reporting in the past. Standouts include include Jonathan Singer, Citizen Smash, The Talking Dog, Dean Esmay, Michael Totten, Crooks and Liars, Red State.Org, Oxblog and Daily Kos.
And now we have Jazz Shaw of Running Scared. Go to THIS LINK HERE and you’ll see his original report on an event involving the anti-war St. Patrick’s Four, who go on trial today. It’s a must read (make sure you read the chain links underneath the post to which we’ve linked).
Why?
Because weblogs give every citizen who wants to put the time and effort into it to offer readers ORIGINAL material in the form of Q&As, research, reports about trials, profiles based on original interviews, or even coverage of anti-war and support-the-war demonstrations. The issue is using blogging as a tool for REAL citizen journalism by seeking information from primary sources or covering events with a notebook, tape recorder, or video recorder — putting in the time and effort to present something ORIGINAL to readers.
Shaw clearly put in the time — and delivers an original, informative package. (PS: To spare us the emails from both sides, yours truly supports the war in Iraq.) Our point isn’t a matter of right/left political message. It’s of the quality of the infoproduct offered to a site’s readers.
Yes, it takes more time to do that than copying a news story and commenting on it. But it sticks in readers’ minds longer, too.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.