Why Blogging Scares Journalists

The team from Newsbreak are learning how to blog:

It’s a bright Monday morning and we’re all here in Makati, learning how to blog.
Just how difficult is it? If you’re a journalist, you’re supposed to know how to write, thus, it shouldn’t be that difficult. But surprisingly, many journalists I know – particularly those from the print media – are apprehensive about blogging.

Must say it took me some time to pluck the courage to blog openly as well. I did not mention my name in my early blogs and hardly wrote about things that would identify me or the organization I belong to.

I guess it’s because, as a journalist, you are trained to be very careful about everything you write about. As a member of a news organization, there is also comfort in the thought that, before your words see print, they will go through rigorous editing and fact-checking.

Blogging, on the other hand, is a spontaneous exercise. You are on your own. Once you hit the “publish” button, that’s it. There’s no turning back. If somebody happens to be browsing through your blog at that very moment, he or she will be able to read everything you wrote; including all the grammatical errors, misspelled words, and (horror of horrors!) ill-informed (read: ignorant) outbursts.

And this is exactly the problem I run into again and again with journalists. It’s the sudden removal of the comfort zone, of the layers of polishers, fact-checkers and editors between your raw, uncensored prose and the world.

It’s all down to you. You take the credit and you take the blame. And that can be a frightening idea for some journalists.

[via The Blogging Journalist]