Blogs as good as newspapers: Discuss

So "media critic" Jeff Jarvis maintains there is no clear distinction - nor should there be - between professional news sources and bloggers.

Well, if Yahoo! were indeed not distinguishing between the two, then my rant below could conceivably end up in search results right alongside the venerable Times and its ilk. Not convinced that's a good idea, myself. Although admittedly, it would be hard to mistake my spewing for Proper Journalism.

Thing is this. There are tabloid rags that sully the name of reporting, and there are informed, articulate blogs that raise this medium to a far more rarefied level. But there is still a distinction. Primarily this: that newspapers have to check their sources. Even on the shoddiest of student papers, contributions do at least get edited by another pair of eyes. Bloggers have no such constraints. Yes, I believe that is an important distinction.

I don't wish to sound patronising, but from the guff that lands in my inbox from perfectly smart, well-educated friends, I think it's clear that even smart and educated people are not always adept at recognising total tosh. Let's not confuse them. Or me. When I'm looking up a news story, I find it hard enough sifting through recognised news sources to find the most relevant and reliable information; I don't wish to have those search results clogged up with blogs that could be written by very articulate and convincing nuts. I can find those on Technorati, thank you very much.

Note: I'm not objecting to Yahoo!'s move to bring up blogs in a clearly defined separate section to the news - that's great. If I want comment, I can find both professional and independent comment in a single search. Lovely. But please, flag up what it is.

There's a side issue to this that intrigues me. If you decide the distinction between edited and non-edited writing is less important than, say, questions of tone and quality, then how to distinguish between the different types of blog? There are trade blogs, non-specific blogs by serious and well informed commentators, blogs with humorous intent, blogs with social intent, and blogs impossible to define. Blogs that succeed in these aims and those that, well, don't. There are blogs read by squillions across the globe, and blogs read by only the cockroaches crawling across their writers' desks. By and large, blog surfers of the world seem to do a fine job of filtering these for themselves; it doesn't take long to find the A list in any sector, or those that appeal to you particularly, and it's easy to tell those written for friends and family from those written in a bid for world media domination. All these have their merit. (Except maybe the cockroach ones.) I'd really rather not worry about where my own site fits into all that.

Please. Let's not get antsy about fitting into the formal news regime. We're not formal news. That's sort of the point. Isn't it?