ABC Nightline did air their piece on bloggers last night. It included some clips from the Berkman Thursday meeting. I think one of the major misrepresentations of the show was the depiction of bloggers as amateurs when many are professionals simply using a new medium that has a lot of great features. I think this is one of main misrepresentations of bloggers in the media. Even many of the journalism oriented bloggers are or were professional journalists or journalism professors. Fortune did not name blogs as the business technology trend for 2005 and The Harvard Business Review did mention blogs in their Breakthrough Ideas for 2005 to simply support novice users. Supporting new users is certainly a good thing and bringing more people to the conversation on topics is a good thing, but many of those in the blogosphere are very experienced on the topics they discuss and this point is often missed by mainstream media.
Post Script
Blogs can be a great business tool, already used by many large and small firms, and this continued misrepresentation of bloggers as amateurs may deter some business, especially small ones, from taking advantage of the opportunities. I recently spoke at Braintrust on business uses of blogs and a number of people in the audience had only thought of blogs as something their teenagers used. They were pleased to see the opportunties it offered their business and planned to start one. I noticed that one, Get Outside, has actually begun.
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