The Blogging Journalist Made its Debut December 23, 2005

On Friday, December 23, 2005, at 11:15 A.M., The Blogging Journalist (TBJ) made its debut with a post headlined "Citizen Journalist and the Mainstream Media." In the two years since, I've posted 2,989 posts, according to TypePad, which hosts TBJ. According to Technorati, TBJ ranks 119,246 out of 70 million. Before I took a break this summer, it ranked around 31,000.

TBJ doesn't have a lot of subscribers or page hits, which doesn't bother me one bit. I write the blog because I love journalism and appreciate the work serious journalists and bloggers do. I see both as practicing journalism. I'm also trying to help chronicle the transition from elitist journalism to participatory journalism as practiced by bloggers, especially blogging journalists. But that's not why I started TBJ.

I started the blog because I thought some bloggers' attacks on journalists and mainstream media  went overboard. Likewise with journalists' attacks on bloggers. I had a hunch many journalists weren't as clueless or recalcitrant about blogging as some bloggers seemed to think, and were willing to make the transition once they understood that it was change or become irrelevant.

I started visiting newspaper websites and saw that not all journalists resisted blogging. Because the more elitist and old-school among them attacked bloggers and blogging with the same venom that some bloggers attacked journalists, the progressive journalists were lumped in with the elitist.

I deliberately set out to chronicle what serious journalists and bloggers were doing rather than offer a lot of commentary. There were already many blogs doing a good job with that. I can think of Press Think and BuzzMachine, to name two of the more prominent. I'll continue to chronicle but will probably offer more commentary in 2008.

Technorati Tags: The Blogging Journalist, Journalists, Bloggers

Comments

[Munir]

Thanks Duncan. You've always been supportive of my efforts and I greatly appreciate it.

[Duncan]

Happy Blogiversary, and may you have many more.