E-Media Tidbits

I've been having an interesting e-mail conversation with Mark Stencel, part of the continuous news team at The Washington Post, about the legitimacy and nature of blogs. Stencel is particularly qualified on the subject, having helped to lead the Post's online news efforts since 1996 and now serving as an editorial liaison between the newspaper and its online edition.

If you've been following the discussion about the various names newspapers are calling their blogs during the Athens Olympics (logs, postcards, snippets), Mark questions whether what you call a blog matters to readers and users. I see his point, but I believe how journalists themselves perceive a blog is important, too. In Mark's own words (with apologies for piecing together some of his comments):

I'm not sure if calling something a blog makes a difference to readers. But it's an interesting question. I remember when I was covering technology in 1993 and '94 and still had to write "the Internet, the interconnected network that allows computer users to share messages and other information." I wonder how mainstream the term "blog" really is among typical online readers. Truth is, I think most newspaper readers don't know what "op-ed" means -- and in an online world, perhaps a term like that may have no meaning at all anymore ...

So, while I agree that blogs are absolutely journalism, the best way to have them treated as such is to stir them into the rest of our editorial mix ...

The other problem I have with the term is that, even to those who know what a blog is, it still may mean different things. Is any collection of sequentially posted tidbits a blog? Is it any unfiltered editorial stream of consciousness? If it's edited, is it no longer a blog? There have been some good definitions offered on E-Media Tidbits, but by those definitions some of the bloggiest things our site does (Dan Froomkin's daily "White House Briefing," for example) wouldn't technically qualify. So while labels might offer validation, they also might be too constraining for something that is new and still a bit free-form.