Adriana Huffington, who has apparently been in Israel for a conference of bloggers, was interviewed by the Jerusalem Post. The full interview will be published by the newspaper next week, its website says. But a video excerpt is already posted.
Adriana Huffington of Huffington Post interviewed by Jerusalem Post
Huffington said that blogs “can keep the stories alive by staying on them until there is some real impact.”
Asked if she believed that bloggers would eventually replace journalists, Huffington said she didn’t see this as an “either-or” situation. Today’s media, she said, unlike yesterday’s media, includes an online component, — and there’s absolutely no reason why the online media should be any less good than the main-stream media at accuracy, fairness, or fact-checking.
The interviewer asked her: While the advantages of “citizen journalism” (as blogging is sometimes called) are speed, immediacy, and the fact that people have a major platform to express their opinion, what about the supposed problems of “citizen journalism”, such as credibility or lack of professionalism, and the disguising of news as opinion (the interviewer must have meant the opposite)? Will bloggers would eventually replace journalists)? Huffington replied that she didn’t see this as “either-or”, and she went on to explain: “I believe the existence of online media can really facilitate the breaking of stories, and the staying on stories, because we are in a way suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and the main-stream media is suffering from attention deficit disorder, and you need both to be able to really stay on a story. When major stories are broken on the front pages of newspapers in the States, and die there, we can keep the stories alive by staying on them, and staying on them, until there is some real impact”.