ayala land will be holding a presscon tomorrow, a SUNDAY! bloody sunday. damn. they’re probably gonna say the same things again. not worth getting up for on a sunday. *sigh*

“It is, because everybody, to their ability, can be an expert, and I think marbe we’re in a transitional period where we are seeing this explosion of blogs. But if your look deeper — and as reporters, we have to look into the details of many stories — you realize that many blogs keep on saying the same (things). They repeat themselves.” — David Barroux, US Bureau chief for French business daily Les Echos

Many are asking whether professional journalists are becoming irrelevant (or news outfits are being wiped out now by blogs) in light of the “citizen journalism” that blogs seem to be espousing. The topic has been tackled during the 2007 Wharton Seminars for Business Journalists and among the panelists are business journalism personalities from different parts of the globe.

It cannot be denied that blogs are becoming news sources themselves and so we have to think about what news outfits can do or what is the industry’s response to the phenomenon.

Barroux suggested:

“And maybe one of the future outcomes could be for people like us to just build on our brand and say we can help readers get to teh relevant information, and we will have to bring that to the public. We can be some kind of a filter, which we do today. We have to learn how to be the filter in a new environment where there is much too much news available and the readers’ time is precious. It’s new so it’s fun, but I guess (readers) will want us to play that role again in the future.”

Yuga posed this question some time ago: are bloggers already considered as journalists, too? i had a hard time pondering this question because i am a blogger and a journalist by profession and of course, my bias is towards the traditional definition of a journalist who employ shoe-leather journalism to generate content.

professional journalists are being edited many times before the article or information can be released whereas bloggers seldom get edited by another party, which makes a lot of difference when it comes to the veracity of the content.

however, as shown by the glorietta blast incident, many citizen journalists have proven that they can also chronicle the event albeit at a distance (since they’re not given access to sources like Alfie Reyes and the PNP) through their blogs.

but as a net citizen, would you rather get the latest information on the blast from bloggers or from newspaper/wires reports?

so i guess “traditional” journalists are still relevant in this era of blogs.

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by the way, i’m sick of writing glorietta blast stories. nakakaumay na.