The internet has long been trying to figure out exactly what a blogger is, if it is appropriate to consider a blogger a journalist or vice versa. Even a couple weeks ago, in her critique of Roger Ebert’s new memoir on the New York Times Book Review Podcast, Maureen Dowd had a noticeable sort of distaste in her voice whenever a ‘blog’ based word came to her lips.
Yet it is 2011, and the line between traditional journalism and blogging has blurred if not disappeared completely. Maureen Dowd approved or not, the New York Times website is full of blogs written by those who have historically been categorized as journalists.
Of course the last few weeks have been busy in line blurring as well. Michael Arrington left TechCrunch to pursue venture capital full time while simultaneously starting a new blog on which he is apparently planning to continue to break news. And long time blogger/journalist MG Siegler, also an employee of TechCrunch, just announced yesterday his intention to become a VC while continuing to cover Apple for TechCrunch and other topics on his own blog.
Writing publicly as a VC isn’t new. Among others, Om Malik and Fred Wilson have been doing so for a long while. But something about Siegler and Arrington seems different. One could posit that lines are about to be even more blurred.
Following this progression, as bloggers become more and more high profile and the archives grow larger, a new hmm moment hit my brain today.
It may take time, but sooner or later there will be a presidential candidate who is a very prolific blogger. One with hundreds or thousands of published blog posts. I wonder how the world will react to that, how the lines will have been blurred and if bloggers will have disseminated so much that nobody will give a second thought.
