HW 30: "Blogging: Are All Citizens Publishers and Reporters?"

On Friday, November 9th, at Keene State College's Citizenship Symposium, a panel of experts discussed the question, "Blogging, Are All Citizens Publishers and Reporters?" The panel was composed of three males, Mike Caulfield a Blue Hampshire blogger, Jim Rousmiere, the Keene Sentinel executive editor, and Emile Netzhammer who is Keene State's Academic Affairs Provost and Vice President. A missing panelist, to my disappointment, was Laura Clawson of the Daily Kos. The discussion was held in the Main Theater of the Redfern Arts Center with a low turn out of about 40 people. Emile's view on blogs and other means of Internet interaction is that today's younger generation is morphing from traditional ways of education. In older generations, people learned by reading textbooks. Today, however, most individuals under age 30 want to create content on things like blogs and wikis rather than memorizing a book. Mike, who was previously a journalist, now turned blogger, got into blogging so he was allowed to do something different than traditional journalism. At the beginning of his bloggging career, Mike educated people about Charlie Bass, which in turn eventually got him out of office. Jim, the oldest member of the group, made three points about journalism and blogging. The first was disclosure, which is when a journalist uses their name when they write articles but bloggers sometimes use false names on their posts. The use of opinions versus facts; journalists use facts while blogs tend to be biased based and opinionated. The last point Jim made was that blogs are "written to the choir" while journalists write for the general public. The most interesting point made by all three of these men was that protection should be given not only to journalists but to bloggers as well. "When bloggers do journalistic activities, they should be protected by the shield law" (Mike Caulfield). Both journalists and bloggers alike should be granted equal protections and I found this an interesting point. When bloggers are participating in actions like a journalist would, they deserve every safety that a regular journalist receives.