Response to Articles Concerning Blogs and Wikis

Rosen, Nicholas, and Dunlop all add interesting insight into the world of blogging. Rosen comments on how we are an audience and should remain in the position to see and hear, lacking any interaction at all. He focuses in on stories wherein blogging is concerned as journalism without the media. This is an interesting way to look at the situation - as journalism and the media being separate entities that only traditionally have been a couple. Another of the stories discusses "team coverage" as having a new definition. We have been programmed to think that the team covering any news story is an outside team of reporters, cameramen, and people that only exist on a specific channel, but now we can be a part of that team and cover stories together, reaching places that otherwise may go unnoticed. Finally, his article made use of the quote, "Bloggers do views, not news." I, however, quite disagree here. Why does news have to involve a sense of formality to be credible? It's not like network or cable news channels don't incorporate a level of bias. During the past San Diego fires, I heavily relied on the Union Tribune's blog (fireblog.blogspot.com) to give me the most up to date information, albeit it came form different sources and "uncredible" writers. Nicholas goes on to write that there are over 12 million bloggers in the US - how then are all of those 12 million people to be considered uncredible. There have to be some reliable and highly intelligent sources in that mix. Also, he goes on to discuss citizen journalists as opposed to the average blogger, but I'm left to wonder if this is anything more than just a title, allowing these citizen journalists to maintain somewhat of an elite status. Dunlop then carries on the conversation discussing blogs as a rebirth of participatory democracy. He, like the others, mentions that few bloggers strive for objectivity - a strength and weakness at the same time. Again, I wonder who says it has to be formal to be credible and a true, standing argument.

The discussions about wikis I found a bit less captivating, probably because while I use a wiki in class, I am much more involved in blogs because it occurs more often and on a more participatory fashion. There few a few comments and notes that I found interesting, though again often disagreed with. Terdiman mentions how news can be one of the most effective uses of wikis. I see how that could be true, but I think the worlds we have discussed like educational and professional presentations and collaborations are much more easily facilitated with tools such as wikis, or as he calls them multipurpose interactive phenomena. Finally, he mentions how wikis are, "particularly significant in the age of increasing distrust of mainstream media." I completely agree, yet I wonder why this doesn't make blogging, then, more significant. Further, in Pink's discussion on the topic, he speaks of contributors to sites like Wikipedia as addicts - WHAT?! I don't even find this point valid enough to argue, so I'll just leave it as that.