Will blogs kill the print star?

 

There has been much debate in some quarters over the role and legitimacy of weblogs in the recent past. Given that most of them are published on free webspace, which is available in plenty on the world wide web, weblogs (or blogs, in short) have grown beyond being just online diaries (or logs on the web, hence the word) to near-full-blown ‘publications’ offering news, views and analyses.

 

Bloggers love them for the freedom they offer, but there are many others who believe that blogs are little more than scurrilous rubbish written by self-righteous people running amok in cyberspace.

 

Well, a few of them indeed are. But my concern is the sweeping disregard for bloggers, especially among practioners in the mainstream media, or MSM, as it’s called in cyberspace.

 

Often, there is commentary in print suggesting that bloggers are amateur analysts who offer gyaan and punditry without a deep understanding of anything. Or, as an edit in this very paper said on Wednesday: “Bloggers lack the rigour of fact-checking and do not have the built-in filters of newspapers to ensure that anything that is printed passes the litmus test of being accurate, objective, balanced and non-libellous.”

 

Yes, not all bloggers observe the discipline of ascertaining facts. This is possible because they think they know it all or it could be plain carelessness. But does this not also hold true for the media the masses trust — newspapers, magazines and television channels? There may be senior journos in publications who sift through stories and knock out stuff that appears biased, but which Indian papers —national dailies included — have full time fact-checkers and researchers to double check everything? Unidentified sources are hence often used in newspapers and one is supposed to assume it is correct.

 

What’s worse — and this is being debated in the media by practitioners themselves — very few organisations strictly observe a code of conduct or have an ombudsperson.

 

My point here is not to trash newspapers or the MSMs. Just because there may be some unethical behaviour doesn’t imply that the profession is. MSMs have a glorious past and tradition in India. But, just as it isn’t right to generalise about MSMs as unethical because of some black sheep, it’s ludicrous to rubbish blogs (and bloggers) as immature.

 

On the bloggers’ part, it is outlandish to say that blogs will kill the traditional press. This was one of the themes discussed in a recent congregation of the blogging community in Chennai. Yes, weblogs are one day going to be a potent media offering in India as they already are in countries like the US, but one can’t see them replacing MSMs. Just as how TV (and video) didn’t really kill the radio star and neither were newspapers ever displaced by television or the internet.

 

In fact, as a practitioner in both media, I can say that blogs complement mainstream media and fuel critical thinking. Many more quality writers are now out of the closet, writing freely on the internet and, yes, content and issues that were earlier never discussed in our papers or on channels, are now part of discussion in the blogosphere.

 

The internet has some intrinsic advantages. Given the interactivity offered by the Web, there is a fair exchange of comments on most blogs, and the ethics of the medium ensure that a blog doesn’t stray: an unethical or badly behaved blogger is sure to be booted out by the community itself.

 

Brand loyalty isn’t a crutch that weblogs can survive on; it is the market — the reader — who rules. If you aren’t good, and you don’t offer quality material, you could be off the toolbar within days. That other blog is a mere click away.