Danah boyd has written a fiery response to yesterday's NYT article on bloggers at the Democratic Convention ("Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps"), which began poorly by equating journalling with blogging, and went downhill from there:
By framing bloggers as diarists, the NYTimes is demanding that the reader see blogs as petty, childish and self-absorbed. They further perpetuate this view by pasting a picture of a youth on the front of the article to suggest that bloggers are all inexperienced and naive, further implying that their reports will not have the value of the more "adult" perspective of "real" journalists.
The entire spin of the article focuses on how bloggers are like children in a candy store – naive, inexperienced and overwhelmed by what is now available to them. The article focuses on the minutia of blogging, emphasizing that bloggers won't really cover the real issues, but provide the "low-brow" gossip. (I somehow suspect that the NYTimes is far more likely to cover what various attendees are wearing than the bloggers.) The article does proceed to share its stance on bloggers through the voice of one subject: "I think that bloggers have put the issue of professionalism under attack." (Not Jason Blair?)
