Wednesday, March 05, 2008

PhoCusWright@ITB 08 - Trusting journalists. Or not.

So there are a few sessions today, ahead of the main event, about travel blogging.

Journalism vs blogging - the perennial debate hacks beat themselves up about at far too frequent opportunities.

A debate about whether bloggers and can be trusted more or less than journalists when it comes to travel content raises a good point.

Journos can be bought, goes one argument. Bloggers just spout what they feel about something.

In other words: it's all about objectivity.

The problem with this, if you believe it, is that bloggers are not read by the masses (generally speaking), but the mainstream media has a huge audience.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

But maybe that blogger enjoys greater trust in the eyes of readers as they offer useful info, follow up comments and regularly take part in the wider conversation.

And does a blogger's focussed readership have the potential to have more impact than a newspaper website?

Travolution Blogger said...

in the majority of cases i would argue that a blogger's readership does not have the same influence as the mainstream media.

at the moment.

we would argue that conversations in social networks has more impact than those in a blog.

Anonymous said...

These are interesting times because the media is changing so rapidly. I agree with Kev about the power of social networks.
But journalists really do have it all to play for in the sense they can engage with their audiences in so many ways.
Journalists have always followed and quoted 'experts' and now blogs allow 'experts' to open up their discussions to a wider audience. This should not change the role of the journalist tho - to report in a fair and accurate way and to point people to the varied discussions that take place around a topic. That's what they are paid to do.

Anonymous said...

There still is a difference between a blogger and a journalist. And there is also the blogging journalist.

I think journalists have more skills about what they are writing about and how they write it. They know what to ask, where to go, where to find all the information needed.

Bloggers are more authentic, more individual. But they write it only from their personal point of view. A journalist should always try to have a look at both sides of the medal.

(sorry for my bad english).