TechWag

Image via CrunchBaseThis is one of the questions that is arising out of a conversation that I am having on Techwag about what responsibility we have as bloggers to try to reduce spin, and try to report the facts. As profy pointed out yesterday, and we commented on the idea that the lines are blurring between what is a blog and what is a news site. Many news sites are incorporating blogs as part of their format, and people might not even realize that they are reading a blog.

While people have been fired for blogging about personal stuff, and people with some serious issues about internet rage, along with the host of other sites that come and go that skirt the edges of what is legal and what is not legal when it comes to commentary, responsible professional bloggers that do this for a living get most of the rules of journalism. Most of the top bloggers have a journalism or zine background, they already write for a living. There are few exceptions to this general rule, the most prominent exception being I Can Haz Cheeseburger which is based on a completely different blogging model.

As new/old media blur the lines between what is fact and what is opinion, many of the new bloggers coming up go through a learning process, some get stuck at the “I’m talking about anything I want, rules be dammed” stage, others try to move on and become more professional based on what they are seeing as their examples. These examples are going to be web sites like the Huffington Post, ValleyWag, Techcrunch, Profy, Robert Scoble and Louis Gray. All have their space, and all serve as examples of what a blogger can and cannot get away with as a blogger. While many might question the value of ValleyWag, it does serve a niche, and it is successful drawing good daily web traffic.

Unfortunately the one real attempt to regulate the blogger world after Kathy Sierra never really gained enough traction to become the general rule of the day. Some will celebrate that fact, some will not. As bloggers though with our own opinions, which we give out on a regular basis, get mixed in with Google News, we are considered legitimate when we show up there. There was nothing more amusing than having one of my articles show up in Google Finance, especially since it should never have been there in my opinion as the person who wrote the piece.

If automated systems like Google can’t tell the difference between what is and what is not a blog, what is and what is not good quality, how can we expect people to know that difference? You can also flip that argument around as well, if people can’t tell the difference, how can Google? If people and Google can’t tell the difference, this opens up the entire process to manipulation, which we have seen happen in the past of that very same system.

Maybe it is time to regulate blogs? Maybe it is time to work out the A, B, C, Z list of bloggers in terms of journalistic responsibility? What responsibility do we have as bloggers to do nothing but report the truth and try to reduce the spin, or point out our obvious biases? What do you think?

Tags: blogger, responsibility, a list bloggers, blog, blogging, news, google, people, news, difference