Public relations professionals generally look at bloggers in one of two ways, either they accept that targeting bloggers is important or they write them off as a fad that won't last.
Journalist and political analyst Bill Moyers said on NPR's Fresh Air (36:38) last night that "blogging is the closest we've come in a long time to the history of American Media in the beginning."
Others say blogging is not journalism. It is my belief blogging lands somewhere in the middle, where some bloggers act as journalist and others use blogging as a diary.
James Horton writes in his article PR and Blogging that "there are hundreds of thousands of blogs now, most of which are not worth knowing about...on the other hand, some blogs generate news and influence events because their authors are respected as experts."
Journalism's primary definition on Dictionary.com is "the collecting, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles in newspapers and magazines and in radio and television broadcasts." There is no mention of online journalism in this first definition, but the sixth definition describes journalism as "written material of current interest or wide popular appeal," which seems to leave room for blogging.
Is blogging journalism? I think the jury is still out. Does it make good PR sense to know what bloggers are saying about your company? Absolutely!
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