Opinions vs. Reporting
Deep down in the comments of a note on Buzzmachine blog, is a very interesting statement by the CEO of the Google-News-like site Topix.Net. He's responding to a query as to why the site doesn't have much blog content (emphasis mine below):
Topix does include a handful of blogs. We will probably add the bulk of them back into the main crawl at some point, but one of the problems is that, despite our affinity for blog content, there's not as much hard news being reported in them as we'd hope. Given the scanning-for-hard-news nature of our system, not very much actually came out of the blogosphere when we pointed our system at it.
It's easy to put out yet-another-opinion on the Iraq war, but it's actual work to attend the city council meeting and produce a write-up, or interview the owner of the local mall about why they're not doing so well. Journalists definitely earn their money. I'll cite your own hyperlocal blog for Bernards, NJ as an example of the difficultly of reliably blogging local news...
He said it, I didn't. And his views matter far more than mine :-).
Sounding-off is easy. Work isn't. Too many people confuse the two, and then compound the error by further overestimating the value of sounding-off. And even worse, confuse pontificating with change.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in cyberblather | on January 14, 2004 11:59 PM (Infothought permalink) | Followups
