It's NOT "just a Blog"

I was going to post an entry about some of the other things that have been bugging me lately, but I just read this interesting article in the L.A. Weekly “Theatre section” which I wanted to write about.

The article, entitled “I Blog Dead People,” (more about blogging than theatre - something I found odd) recapped a fact-checking faux pas when a L.A. Theatre critic posted an entry mourning the passing of another L.A. Theatre critic who wasn’t actually dead. The critic eventually posted another entry, apologizing for the error but tried to downplay it by saying that he was just writing something in a blog and that his mistake wasn’t as grave as people were making it out to be.


L.A. Weekly critic Steven Leigh Morris (writer of the article) seemed to have a bone to pick with this line of thinking as he noted these were the same people who wanted an ‘on-the-record’ interview with a theatre publicist so they could use it in a story they were putting on the same blog.

I found the point Morris makes here incredibly interesting because I’ve seen examples of this contradiction happen before: a prominent writer (who usually comes off as a little smug) will argue that blogging is a legitimate (and better) source of news because it can provide a faster and more in-depth look at things where journalism can’t, and then later argue that “it’s just a blog” when they’re called out on an error that they made in an entry.

Nice try, media bloggers, but you can’t have it both ways – if you’re going to argue that blogging is a legitimate source for news, then maybe you should treat it like one and subject it to the same fact-checking (and spell-checking, seriously) that the other media does. Or at least take responsibility for the error and correct it. Otherwise you’re just hurting your reputation – and that of bloggers everywhere.

Granted, a lot of bloggers don’t do this. A lot of them either check to make sure they’re accurate or say upfront that their claims are pure B.S., but this is important for anyone who blogs to keep in mind because blogging IS becoming a reputable source of news these days. Every company with a website probably has a blog function by now – and we should be able to trust what they say whenever it mentions something newsworthy.

Otherwise blogs would just be filled with baby pictures, online surveys and angst-ridden teen poetry.



Can you imagine? This guy has.