Vanity vs Information Blogs

The first blog I found was here that contained information on home improvement and stories of home improvement from several home owners. This site was interesting because it had featured stories from home owners that discussed what they’ve done to their houses to make them more likeable. The first blog article I found was about someone loving “Queens Reborn” mansion craze. Although I am not a home owner myself I could read these blogs to learn a lot about what people do once they own a home. The topic of home improvement is of personal interest to the blog’s creators therefore we call these information blogs.

The second blog, a vanity blog, was found here. This blog is created by Karen Coyle and talks about her life in the digital age. She talks about how she organizes her life in the digital age and what she’d like to see change about the digital age. This blog is an insight into the life of Karen Coyle, her life, and her opinions. Just by reading this blog you get to learn things about Karen and how she things. For example, on Friday, August 24, 2007 she lets us know how she discovered the key difference between information architects and librarians. I find blogs like this interesting as you get to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

The difference between these two blogs is that one blog, the information blog, relays information on a specific topic like home improvement. The vanity blog is basically a blog that gives us information about the author, the author’s opinions and their daily life.

Do I feel that blogging supports this type of journalism? I don’t see how this type of blogging would make it into journalism unless the author was an important movie actor or someone in the “in” at the WhiteHouse or something of the like. Information blogs are too opinion orientated and diverse to be anything factual for journalism in my opinion. Vanity blogs on the other hand could be useful in journalism if the author had something of interest to talk about, especially something that could not be obtained by the media.

I believe this research somewhat supported my original thesis that blogging has an impact on journalism.

Online Magazines vs Blogs

Which do you prefer to get your latest news from: Magazines or blogs? I searched and searched the internet and could not find a current events blog or anything of the sorts. After some frustrating searches I found: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/. This blog is apparently run by a newspaper - New York City's Hometown Newspaper. If I were to get my news from a blog I would want the source to be credible. There were a few "one man" blogs that talked about current events but I don't think that would be credible. The magazine I chose to compare is Time Magazine located at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/current/.

Things that I've noticed: The blogs on NYDaily News are a bit more specialized and do not cover every current event out there like Time Magazine does. I much more prefer Time Magazine over any blog form of news because it is more organized, far better written, and in a global format instead of a specialized format. All in all, I would find a magazine far more credible than any blog.

After researching blogs vs magazines I still think that blogs are impacting print journalism but less so than I did before. I searched google for news blogs, current event blogs, and what not. I could not find a single blog that covered as much information in as much detail as magazines do. That tells me something... Are blogs really impacting journalism like I thought? I do not think so as much now based on my discovery. I give e-zine's a 2 - somewhat did not support my thesis that blogs impact print journalism. However, I do not want to change my thesis statement yet.

Entrepreneurial Blogs

An example of an entrepreneurial blog is found here: http://naturalselling.blogspot.com/. In this blog author Michael Oliver is trying to sell his books and methodology on "natural selling." His primary website is: http://www.naturalselling.com/. Although I don't see any comments to his recent blogs, Mr. Oliver allows prospective customers to comment on his posts and see what he is talking about so they will buy his books which link to his company's website.

Blogging has a huge impact on business. Being able to talk with people before buying their services is sales 101. Business week in their article "Blogs Will Change Your Business" discusses how blogs are re-defining how people view big companies. In an article from the Technology Review "The Business of Blogging" we learn about how blogging is redefining everything from news to businesses.

Entrepreneurs have many options available to them to advertise themselves to their customers. What makes blogging so unique is that it costs relatively nothing to set up a blog and advertise yourself to people. Television commercials cost millions of dollars to put up and newspaper add spaces are incredibly expensive. For a starting business there is nothing like saving money so why not use blogs to advertise your business? Unlike Television and newspaper adds blogs allow customers to directly contact their sellers and see the human aspect of the company selling a product. One thing that bothers me about blogs is that there are so many of them out there that to make your own blog puts you in as just "another blogger." However, blogs are a great alternative because they offer a personal look at a company and a cost free method of advertisement.

On a scale of one to five I can say without a doubt it is a five that my research above supports my original thesis that blogging is impacting the print journalism world.

Blogger's Impact on Journalism?

This topic has to do with whether or not blogging has significantly impacted the print journalism industry.

After doing some research on the web I've come to the conclusion that most people do not think that blogging is journalism although it can contain news and descriptions of events. Wikipedia describes of a conference that talked about the credibility of bloggers as a whole. Here at the Wikipedia Article we see that credibility is indeed an issue. The results of the conference were that people needed to be skeptical of anything related to blogging. Second, I found that blogs are becoming incredibly popular. Blogs are so popular that thirty four percent of the internet spends time reading blogs according to Imedia Connections on their article: "The Popularity of Blogs". Lastly, I believe due to the popularity that blogs have influenced journalism because people who are involved with an organization can better comment about it than a news reporter who sees the outside. According to CNET News in their article "The Future of Blogging" we see that Wharton professor Dan Hunter compares bloggers with news papers. Apple employees are blogging about the latest technological breakthroughs and news employees blogged about Dan Rathers departure from CBS before he officially announced it. Blogging is revolutionizing the way we receive the latest information and the amount of information we can receive.

Therefore, I definitely believe that blogging has impacted print journalism. News reporters need to keep up with bloggers in any way possible. Instead of reporting on something obvious or easy to report on paid news reporters will have to go even further to get a story on something that the public is interested in, something that an average blogger couldn't afford or research on his or her own.