J. D. Lasica talking to Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls, David Winer, Deborah Branscum, Paul Andrews and Glenn Fleishman
weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices.
weblogs: a new source of news.

weblogging – amateur journalism?
not everyone who keeps a journal is a journlaist
institutional media – gatekeepers
journalism: quality control, objectivity, credibility, etc…

what about blogging?

Blogging: addictive, creative and fun.

1, Personality: part of a blod’s allure is its unmediated quality. ANTI-EDITING.
“repersonalizing journalism?” or weblogs are “personal journalism”?

2, Instantaneity ANTI-EDITING.

3, Interactivity
(blogging) lets people share opinions in a less judgmental way than when you interact with people in the real world.
weblogs have a self-informing and self correcting system built into it.
writing as part of a conversation. conversations don’t have audiences. (markets are a conversation, everything was negotiated.)

4, new structure and format
One overriding appeal: here’s a media form that let’s you write at any length about any issue you care deeply about.
What about if the tools become more sophisticated, will it be a new kind of journalism?
multi-media, moblogging, stream audio, video etc…

5, Lack of marketing constraints. (Only for people who wants to read, maybe only for yourself.)
and no income!

(but here one can think of the Power Law. )

Collective Blogging vs Journalism

1, collective filtering
2, multiple perspectives.
3, information sharing, exchanging and disseminating
what’s interesting here is: not the publication of a first-person journal but the chain of interaction it often ignites.
3, experts knowledge:
indespensable source of niche expertise. The weblog community is basically a whole bunch of expert witnesses who increase their expertise constantly through a sort of reputation engine.
4. reputation engine
no less quality and integrity in being a amateur journalist. there there is more integrity because blogger’s writing does not depend on a paycheck.
5, unique architecture (such as slashdot)

the Web gives voices to a lot of alternative points of view. Journlist is to ensure that the voice of the people should be exposed.

‘soft journalism”: the any-to-any system of talking and sharing rather than the traditional “hard journalism” model of writing that is distributed to the masses. (Doc Searls. )

a weblog can be an authoritative source of information based on community endorsement.

Salon: “farm system for essayists?”