Bloggers and Journalists

is the subject of this entry at Libertarian Samizdata

From this little article lifted in its entireity from today’s JPMorgan Chase Tech Industry Daily, it would appear that the corporate world is starting to take notice.

Will bloggers compete with journalists?

I certainly hope so. The trouble with public education, in a nutshell, is that it’s practiced by education majors, not the brightest lights on the tree. Similarly, the trouble with journalism is that it’s practiced by people scarcely a notch up from education majors, who don’t really understand most of what they write about. You clearly get better quality analysis from people like Andrew Hofer, Megan McArdle, and VodkaPundit on business and economics than you find in the papers, which is why their blogs are so hot.

As more people with first-hand knowledge of real-world phenomena begin to blog, the traditional news media will shrink even further into infotainment and fluff, since that’s what they do best.

The first reaction of the media to the onslaught of bloggers into their turf is to promote journalist bloggers over expert bloggers. They’re circling the wagons and protecting their own. But this attempt at co-option won’t work, because it’s too easy to find the people who really know stuff.

The reaction of smart journalists, especially the young ones, to this encroachment on their turf is to go back to school and learn something that’s more generally useful than the dynamics of typesetting.