Andrew Sullivan

I have been researching the positive and negative aspects of blogging being a professional form of journalism. Many people question whether blogging is an accurate, reliable source, and I have found an article on the defensive side for blogging. Andrew Sullivan, a political blogger for The Atlantic, wrote a blog titled Why I Blog.

The article talks about the spontaneous expression that blogging allows for, and the personality that goes into blogging. Many people want to read a blog because it seems more personal, and the audience likes personal. Blogging also reaches a larger demographic of people than print journalism, and talks about a journalist's responsibility to their public. The article only argues the positive things of blogging, so I would need to find a counter-part article to fully conclude my research.

With print, an editor will fix a journalist's mistakes before the article goes to print; if more mistakes occur, people will send in letters to the editor and then the problem must be notably fixed in a following issue of the newspaper or magazine. Journalists are never specifically pin-pointed for their mistakes, because the editors take all the heat. Blogging, however, allows the mistakes to be pointed out directly in a responding post, therefore making the blogger/journalist take full responsibility for their mistakes. As Sullivan says in his article, "It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one...exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before." You should not blog if you cannot handle the criticisms that people will throw your way.

-Kristina Kercher