‘Stand-Alone Journalism’

I think this could catch on! In her blog, Chris Nolan floats the idea of calling bloggers (at least those who engage in news or news-like activity) “stand-alone journalists.” She writes: “For a while I and many others have been dissatisfied with the term ‘web logging.’ That focuses on the technology, not on what the technology produces. So, after a little thought, I’m calling what I and others do Stand-Alone Journalism. Why Stand-Alone Journalism? Well, it’s accurate. A journalist — or a small group of reporters — can work on the web to produce what they want as they find it appropriate. And readers are equally free to read the work of individual journalist as they see fit, on their time, not on schedules set by TV networks or the newspapers.” Not bad. Not bad at all. (Though I’ll add the caution that “weblog” encompasses a very wide variety of work — some of which I’m comfortable adding the “journalism” tag, some of which I’m not.)