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Good journalism is expensive.
I challenge Hartigan's belief that bloggers with readers do not regularly source their opinions when offering them. Based on experience, the more sources, the more likely it is that readers will care about and consider what you have to say.
I also challenge Keen's argument that bloggers "degenerate democracy into mob rule and rumor milling." I have monitored comment sections which seem to get closer and closer to the truth as more and more people comment. Ultimately, those who are trivial and nonsensical lose out to those committed to truth and intelligent debate.
Finally, "good journalism" may be expensive, but there exists many possibilities for those who wish to file reports on shoestring budgets. You don't have to have millions to share with others what it was like to participate in an antiwar rally and march, what it was like to be at the Inauguration, how a hearing or town hall on health care went, etc.
A person can call up sources and conduct interviews. Of course, it helps to affiliate yourself with an organization, but just saying you are an Internet news writer and asking for some information to put together an article can yield very good results.
Hartigan's lecture comes just over a week after Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post was heavily vilified by Washington Post's Dana Milbank and other members of the press corps for being able to ask a question to Obama at a press conference. The anger, of course, stemmed from the fact that Pitney was a blogger for a leftwing Internet news site and he got to ask his question before others who normally would have been called on before any bloggers would.
It also comes a day after CNBC host Dennis Kneale called bloggers "digital dickweeds" and went on a tirade against financial bloggers who don't think that the recession is over.
The terrain is shifting. Bloggers are getting better and better at what they do. They are becoming more professional and choosing to be less amateurish in the way they present news and information.
The rise of citizen journalism has occurred because of media organizations' failure(s) to report real news, news citizens need to make proper decisions in our democracy and in our world.
Media organizations are running scared. And they should be.
