Let me set the room for you. It is 11pm, it is dark with one desk lamp on shining down on my keyboard. All that could be heard is the typing of keys and the soothing sound of The Coffee House in the background.
Alright now that I have done that I will get on with what I originally came here to talk about. The age old debate of Local Reporter vs. Local Blogger. I know it is a big topic for a guy like me who doesn’t know much about either, but I figure I’ll give it a shot and see what comes of it. I am hoping to come from a different angle this time around. That angle being passion.
I definitely think that both parties have passion. I don’t think either would do what they do if they did, but I will explain what I think I see. A Local Report has a passion for the job. They take pride in reporting the news, writing a good article and the general process of getting it out to the people. A Local Blogger has a passion for the place. They take pride in where they are, the people that are there and what is going on. They enjoy meeting residents and old timers, hearing the history of a place and how things got to the way they are.
Now each can be positive and negative and I don’t stand for one over the other. A Reporter may not have as much of a deep connection with a place, this could lead them to not care as much, to only be concern about the new and allow them to pick up and go onto other things. On the other hand a Blogger who has been around for a while, knows the community and its people could be bias. It would also be hard for a Blogger to leave their community, much like I did.
I guess you could say there isn’t really a competition between the two, because a Local Blogger is much more like a Columnist than a Reporter. That is why I think we need both. We need reports to deliver the news as it is, with fact checking and hard quote. While the blogger will take the story further and learn about it and the people involved.
What do you think? Am I just rambling or am I making sense?