Paciic University CommonKnowledge Volume 4 (2004) Interface: he Journal of Education, Community and Values 3-1-2004 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news Melissa Wall California State University-Northridge Follow this and additional works at: htp://commons.paciicu.edu/inter04 Recommended Citation Wall, M. (2004). Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news. Interface: he Journal of Education, Community and Values 4(2). Available htp://bcis.paciicu.edu/journal/2004/01/edit.php his Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Interface: he Journal of Education, Community and Values at CommonKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Volume 4 (2004) by an authorized administrator of CommonKnowledge. For more information, please contact gilmani@paciicu.edu. Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news Rights Terms of use for work posted in CommonKnowledge. his article is available at CommonKnowledge: htp://commons.paciicu.edu/inter04/8 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news Posted on March 1, 2004 by Editor By Melissa Wall <melissa.a.wall@csun.edu> Assistant Professor Journalism California State University – Northridge Index .01 Introduction .02 A brief history of modern journalism .03 An economic metaphor for understanding blogs .04 The three case studies .05 Conclusion .06 References This essay assesses how the intersection of blogging and journalism is changing the nature of news. An economic concept, the informal or black market economy, is introduced as a metaphor for understanding the ways in which blogs are different from and similar to mainstream or “formal” journalism and what these differences tell us about the future of journalism. .01 Introduction (return to index) In a war that some observers called the Internet war because of the ubiquitous role of online communication, blogs became an important cultural phenomenon, one that suggests news as we know it may be transforming into something different from what we have come to expect from mainstream, professional outlets. This essay examines the intersection of blogging and journalism by focusing on three cases studies of current events/news bloggers operating during the U.S.-Iraq war in the spring of 2003. My goal is to outline a spectrum of possibilities on how blogging appears to be contributing to fundamental changes in the practice of journalism. The three bloggers are: Salam Pax, the celebrated “Baghdad blogger,” blogging from his home in http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 1/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface Baghdad; Chris Allbritton, an independent journalist sponsored by reader donations and other donors blogging from Northern Iraq; M. L. Lyke, blogging for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. An examination of these blogs reveals potential models for collecting and reporting news in the future – although this is not to say that blogging on its own is re-shaping journalism. Well before blogging and news oriented blogs in particular became a major Internet phenomenon, the practice of journalism was already undergoing dramatic changes. Such changes are set within a series of broader societal contexts. In general economic trends, capital is concentrated in fewer hands while at the same time more able to flow unhindered through national borders than perhaps ever before (Korten, 1995; Greider, 1997). Politically, the world is increasingly tied together through the rise of international bodies such as the WTO and regional trade treaties, while at the same time increasingly balkanized as ethnic, political and other groups react to this homogenization (Barber, 1996). In the media world, policy changes concerning ownership levels, privatization and de-regulation over the last decade have combined with these economic and political tendencies to alter how news media operate. News organizations have been swept up in a tremendous surge of buyouts and mergers until a handful of companies now own much of the world’s media (Bagdikian, 1996; 1997; Herman & McChesney, 1997). Critics argue that mainstream news has become increasingly commercialized, saturated with entertainment values and practices and yet still unable to attract the once taken-for-granted large and heterogeneous audiences it did in years past (Hallin, 1992; McChesney, 1998) With ever greater concerns for profits, entertainment values have begun replacing information values, giving rise to sensationalism and tabloid journalism. At the same time that these changes have occurred, journalism has also increasingly been shaped by the creation and development of various technologies ranging from cell phones to satellites, a tendency that many have identified as positive (Katz, 1997). One of the biggest changes has been the arrival of the Internet. News is now circulated faster than ever before, with more access to seemingly unlimited information. The Internet has also been seen as contributing to a counter trend toward the centralization of news media; that is, the Internet has enabled vast numbers of decentralized, small, sometimes grass-roots news and information providers to secure a public space with potentially a global audience (Wall, 2002, 2003). It has also contributed to the creation of news that allows and even encourages interactivity with audiences. Not everyone agrees that the Internet has had a liberatory influence on communication, and, indeed, it is viewed as contributing to both positive and negative effects (Schiller, 1995). Thus, the intersection of the web and journalism has produced a news that is briefer and yet potentially links to infinitely more information, yet whose credibility is much more difficult to discern (Katz, 1997; Pavlik, 2001; Kawamoto, 2003). Here, we are specifically concerned with blogging as it relates to journalism. A weblog or blog is a personal website, usually enabled by special a software program, that is updated frequently with http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 2/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface the most recent posts appearing first. While not all blogs produce or even concentrate on providing news, a large number of them do, which has led to the identification of blogging as a new form of journalism, one in which many of the expectations of professional reporting are not present (Lasica, 2002). For example, unlike mainstream media, news blogs generally are not objective or detached but rather opinionated and personal; hence, they are sometimes referred to as personal journalism (Allan, 2002). Lasica (2002) writes that blogging may well be a new form of amateur journalism. If that’s the case, what might be some of the iterations that we are likely to see in news blogs? What are the underlying issues facing any blog that operates as a news provider? .02 A brief history of modern journalism (return to index) Before we consider the case of blogs, it is important to first understand the origins of modern journalism. Although news itself can be said to have existed since people needed to exchange information between villages or tribes, the idea of news in terms that we recognize today is said to have been created in the 19th century with the rise of the penny press and a system of providing information based on a commercial model (Schudson, 1978). Prior to the penny press was the 18th century commercial bulletin board model in which the comings and goings of ships and other business news were the main types of information; at the beginning of the 19th century came political propaganda sheets run by and for political parties (Baldasty, 1992). While those publications focused on specific audiences, the penny press sought to reach a much broader swath of the public, providing news of crime, sports, high society and more. Unlike its predecessors, it was cheap and funded less through subscriptions than through advertising space sold to commercial interests. The creation of the penny press was part of a series of interconnected political, economic, technological and social changes occurring as the country became more democratic and more urban while technology grew more sophisticated and the market sector increasingly complex. Schudson (1978) argues “the penny press invented the modern concept of ‘news’ . . . the newspaper reflected not just commerce or politics but social life” (p. 22). Baldasty (1992) writes that by the end of the 19th century news was defined “through the relationship of the press and society, through economic forces that shape newspapers as businesses, and through the structure and day-to-day operations of the press itself” (p. 144). By the turn of the century, a series of professional practices had begun to develop that would come to anchor the typical mainstream news operation for decades to come. This included the notion of reporters working beats where information was collected at certain key locations such as the courts and police stations; the use of the interviews in collecting information (this practice was considered shocking when American journalists exported it to Europe in the 1800s [Schudson, 1995].); a reliance on officials as the main sources of news. As the 20th century unfolded, news increasingly came to be seen as a needing to be “objective” or neutral, presenting both sides of an issue and letting the audience decide what it thought. Reporters had to distance themselves from what they covered, employing a detached voice that showed their non-involvement in the issues. Likewise, news audiences were seen as recipients of the information whose voices were generally limited http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 3/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface to the letters pages. More broadly than the practices described above, modern news came to been seen as the cultural product of specific institutions: the news media. McQuail (1994) emphasized that “news could not exist without media institutions. Unlike all other forms of authorship or cultural creation, news-making cannot be done privately or individually. The institution provides both the machinery for distribution and the guarantee of credibility and authority” (p. 267). Gans (1979) more specifically wrote that news is “information which is transmitted from sources to audiences with journalists – who are both employees of bureaucratic organizations and members of a profession – summarizing, referring and altering what becomes available to those sources in order to make the information available to their audiences” (p. 80). By the late 20th century, most of these assumptions about journalistic practices were increasingly criticized. The beat system meant that journalists were overly dependent on official and elite voices, often ignoring the views of the poor and disenfranchised. The groups with most resources were better able to access the media and thus have loudest voices (Gans, 1979; Tuchman, 1978). Thus, while normative theories describe the news media as a fourth estate or watchdog over government, in practice the relationship has tended to be much less confrontational because of media’s dependence on these elite groups as sources for press releases, quotes, background and the like (Bennett, 1996; Cook, 1998). Because news media are heavily dependent on government information subsidies, their relationship has come to be characterized as more symbiotic than antagonistic with the range of opinions often indexed only to the range available among elite government officials (Gandy, 1982; Bennett, 1990; Cook, 1998). Journalistic neutrality also meant that in many stories two sides were told even when other sides were left out. While journalism practices have been criticized for some time now, only more recently has the latter notion described above – that only news media outlets can produce news – begun to be challenged. Yet the phenomenon of blogging seems to question some of our fundamental assumptions about what is news and who can produce it. Blogging forces us to consider what Altheide and Snow (1991) have suggested is the fundamental question: Not “What is news?” but “What are news media?” (p. 51). These questions are particularly salient today as observers of American news have become increasingly pessimistically about its future. .03 An economic metaphor for understanding blogs (return to index) I propose one means of understanding these changes is through the prism of an economic concept, that of the informal economy (also called the black market, hidden economy, etc.). This term generally refers to economic situations in which groups of individuals have been shut out of legal markets. The black market often exists because the formal market is too difficult for small players to enter. They lack the necessary capital to start a legitimate business or are unable to meet government regulations. In some cases, larger, legitimate businesses use these informal ones to lower their own costs. We sometimes think of the informal economy as a product of http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 4/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface highly regulated economies such as the former Soviet Union where everyday goods could be difficult to come by. Today, the informal economy is seen as a result of the globalization of markets and thus no longer limited to highly regulated economies (Sassen 1998; Portes, Castells & Benton, 1989). Thus, informal economies exist in rich countries as well and are a major part of the market sector in cities such as Los Angeles and New York. Whether the informal economy is a positive or negative phenomenon depends on the economist as a well as the context within which it operates. Observers of the informal economy in what was the Soviet Union saw it as emblematic of some sort of freedom and capitalistic instincts. In Africa, the informal economy has been identified as a way for women and others who traditionally face high barriers to enter the workforce. In other contexts, the informal economy has been seen as enabling Los Angeles and New York City sweatshops and other exploitative practices. The informal economy does not contribute any taxes, and consumers and workers within this economy are rarely protected from abusive bosses, co-workers or others. There is no one to turn to for faulty or dangerous products. The relationship between the informal economy concepts and blogs is that ordinary people increasingly have little to no access to the media. Because of concentrated control, it is extremely difficult if not impossible for ordinary people to enter the market as say magazine publishers or television station owners. The opportunities to start up new media are small in part because they require so much capital and because government rules, especially over the last decade have favored large companies. Many media critics argue that neither the government nor the market is providing a meaningful space for a broad range of voices; that is, the marketplace of ideas to some extent is failing because what is being offered is more akin to the empty grocery shelves in the Soviet era supermarkets (McChesney, 1998). Because of these barriers, one of the few ways to enter the market for some aspiring information producers is via an Internet site or as Blood (2002a) writes, “weblogs have made all of us publishers” (p. x). In the three blog cases examined here, two (Where is Raed?, Back in Iraq 2.0) would fall to varying degrees under the notion of what we might call informal or black market journalism (the terms “informal journalism” and “black market journalism” will be used interchangeably here). Just as within the informal economy, such producers are not operating within the standard set of rules that have historically characterized mainstream, formal journalism: Here that means they are often neither objective nor neutral and thus express opinions and positions; they reject the notion of a being detached observer and write in a personal first-person voice, sometimes even as a participant in the events described; they often reject the mainstream’s dominant advertising supported model. The third blog represents the mainstream response to these informal journalists. .04 The three case studies (return to index) Three blogs were chosen for examination, representing a range of possibilities. The first is the blog called Where is Raed? produced by an anonymous 29-year-old Iraqi architect, who went by http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 5/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface the name Salam Pax during the war. The blog was first posted from Baghdad in the fall of 2002 while Saddam Hussein was still in power. After the war, Salam began blogging for the UK’s The Guardian newspaper, and had his posts published in a book. Salam’s blog chronicled everyday life for a college-educated Iraqi living under a dictator and during an invasion of his country. Salam’s blog became one of the most visited and linked to blogs during the war. Because he was based in Baghdad he could provide his own version firsthand of the war and life under Saddam. Back in Iraq 2.0 was produced by journalist Chris Allbritton, who previously worked for the Associated Press and New York Daily news among other news outlets. Allbritton established a blog that was not affiliated with a particular media institution; he proposed to his blog readers that they provide him with funding to travel back to Iraq (he had been in Northern Iraq the previous summer) to create a blog without the filters of a mainstream media organization. He did indeed land enough funds to finance his way back to Iraq for the war. His blog was nominated by Utne Magazine for one of its Independent Press Awards in the fall of 2003. The final case is the blog produced by feature writer, M. L. Lyke for the Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer located in Seattle, Washington. Her blog was posted from the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf for most of the month of March 2003, the duration of the reporter’s posting as an embedded reporter on the ship. Lyke’s blog focused on life on the ship, recording her impressions, interactions with sailors and with other journalists. Each blog is examined here in terms of the concept of informal journalism outlined above. The specific questions asked are: To what extent is the blog objective and neutral? Does the blogger share opinions and points of view? How detached are they in writing about the war and related issues? Do they employ a personal first-person voice? Participate in events described? Do the blogs encourage their readers to have a voice in the production of content? What appears to be their funding model? A blog run by a non-journalist Salam Pax’s blog became increasingly popular as the war unfolded and he was able to relate what he saw happening in Baghdad, providing a window onto Iraq, one unfiltered by mainstream media, government or any other gatekeepers. Indeed, the site became controversial during the war as other bloggers debated whether he was a real person or working for some entity such as the CIA, or perhaps even Saddam Hussein. Salam’s blog appears to herald a new form of war reporting, one in which the war’s victims are given a global voice – a voice of their own choosing rather than being mediated by the news media. In addition, his site features no advertising or other sponsorship; Salam appears to have been dependent on no one to fund his site. Salam does not attempt to provide an objective account of what transpires in Baghdad, but rather the experiences and viewpoint of a young Arab man. As he prepared for and lived through the war, his site conveyed a first-person narrative of his life. Yet this is more than a diary; in part, because it is interactive. For example, he responds to the many readers who have sent him ehttp://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 6/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface mails, at one point apologizing for being slow to respond as he is getting ready for the war to break out. Salam encouraged reader feedback and he received dozens and sometimes hundreds of comments in response to his posts. Like much of chat room or bulletin board discussions, these ranged from the vitriolic to the thoughtful. Many mentioned that his site was an alternative to the mainstream media which was not supplying this sort of information or perspective. Salam includes a series of links on his main page under the following titles: “Archive,” “Where is Raed v1.0,” “Daily Reads,” “Daily Blogs,” “Secretly Stalking,” “Eye Candy don’t read, just look,” and “Things I stare at.” Most of these are to other bloggers rather than the news media. Who the blogger links to is important because as blogging expert Blood (2002b) puts it, “a weblogger is aligning himself with his tribe” (p. 48). Clearly, Salam considers himself part of the blogging universe more so than the news media. He is not afraid to direct visitors to other blogs off his own site. Salam’s blog illustrates how blogs can open news production up to practically anyone. Salam himself becomes a news producer, pulling information from mainstream media, other blogs and from his own first-hand experiences. By incorporating interactivity, he enables visitors to stop being passive recipients and become co-creators. While media scholars have long argued that news can only be produced by professional institutions, as this example suggests, that is clearly changing. A blog run by an independent journalist Chris Allbritton was a former journalist for the New York Daily News and the Associated Press who began soliciting donations online via Paypal to finance an independent reporting trip to Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq. Allbritton promised unfiltered reporting from his site, Back in Iraq 2.0 (subtitled: Being a recounting of my journalistic adventures concerning Iraq.) He used a laptop and a satellite telephone to post his stories from Northern Iraq, a region he had reported from the year before (Fost, 2003). From all appearances, Allbritton’s blog was an independent production at least as far as any sort of corporate ownership or control. Indeed, this independence was his selling point. As he told the San Francisco Chronicle: ” ‘There’s no editor . . . It’s just me and the readers. I’m their man in Baghdad’ ” (Fost, 2003, para 6). Contributing to the sense that Allbritton’s site reflected an independent voice was the amount of personal information he provided. In an “about me” section, he posted his resume, prior articles and contact information. On the main page of the site, he wrote this personal message: “I’m asking your help in supporting independent journalism! Send me back to Iraq to report on what’s happening. (Please click here for more details.) Click on of the PayPal icon below to donate. You can see the progress I’ve made in raising funds further down under ‘Angel Investors.’ ” The sharing of personal information and details about the site’s financing conveys a sense of transparency, suggesting that visitors are seeing the “real” inner workings of the site, further http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 7/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface suggesting that there is no advertiser or corporate-owner influenced agenda here. For Allbritton, the lack of funding meant he was more free than a reporter with lots of resources but answering to a corporate owner. His site was also interactive as readers could contribute comments on his posts. Indeed, Allbritton personally responded to some reader’s posts. At one point he wrote, “I read every comment that people make on this site, as well as all emails. However, because of time, bandwidth and other considerations, I may not be able to respond to everyone. Please don’t take it personally. I really, really appreciate everyone taking the time to write, and your notes of support keep me excited.” The comments and responses also meant that readers were cocreating some of the content. That is, their content became part of the posts and the line between audience and producer became blurred at points just as with Salam’s blog. While Allbritton linked to other bloggers, in March 2003 all of these were people who had donated to his blog. The only other blog link was to a group blog, warblogging.com, of which he was a participant. He promised to e-mail them the dispatches first, before they went up on the blog. All other standing links (i.e, those not found within individual posts) were to his own site’s archives or discussion forums or to efforts such as Paypal to fund his blog. (After the war, his site added links to other bloggers, as well as to a company that sells term papers to college students, a foreign affairs journal and a blogging software company). He noted that these advertisers did not control his blog content. Allbritton’s site appears to be a bridge of sorts between Salam’s and the blog produced on the Seattle-Post Intelligencer site. He draws on his former experience as a journalist to establish credibility, but rejects the idea that a reporter working for corporately owned media can truly provide independent reports. A blog run by a newspaper M. L. Lyke, a writer with the Seattle Post Intelligencer, was posted aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln as part of the Pentagon’s embedded journalist program. Various discussions have taken place around the question of whether a blog appearing on a mainstream media outlet’s site is a “real” blog. Although more and more news media companies are starting blogs, questions about how such blogs will exhibit the independence and often saucy tone of independent blogs continues to be asked. Lyke’s blog is a good example of many of these issues. There is some evidence of a blogger’s personal voice in Lyke’s posts such as when she writes: “I’m crazy missing my girl, my brave almost-16 baby who’s on the streets protesting this war,” but at other times, she seems to pull her punches, referring to herself or other journalists in the third person, writing for example, “Media made a junk-food raid on the ship’s store to score Snickers and Twix, nuts, Pringles and Cheetos.” As an embedded journalist, Lyke was assigned an escort whose job was to supervise her activities on board the ship (including, obviously, interviews and other information collection). She wrote: “Seems everyone aboard has been coached for the media onslaught. When I ask an http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 8/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface enlisted man his opinion about protests he mumbles: ‘Gotta think. What should I say?’ ” Clearly, having an escort would constrain any reporter in terms of collecting information. However, other bloggers also face various constraints as well, including lack of access to original information. Indeed, a large number of bloggers are not collecting any original information on their own, but relying on reporters such as Lyke for their fodder. Yet clearly she is not completely free here. While she voices frustration with the embed program, she doesn’t articulate a personal position on the war. That makes her different from many bloggers who have definite opinions. That seems to be the dilemma for mainstream news outlets; had Lyke expressed an opinion for or against the war, she and her employer would have offended and angered a large swath of their readership. But if this is a blog, isn’t part of the point to take stands and articulate opinions? Ultimately, she doesn’t use the blog as a platform to voice a pro or anti war stance because that would violate her role as an “objective” journalist by the measures of the day. Lyke’s blog does not come across as an independent production in other ways as well. Her blog is situated within the Post-Intelligencer website. There is no attempt to set it up as independent from the newspaper. Her blog is linked to from a page calling itself Blog Central that includes a link to one other blogger: the staff photographer who was with her on the ship. By failing to connect to the so-called blogosphere, the blog appears to be aligning itself with its own paper more so than with the cultural phenomenon of blogging. The blog does not seek to deemphasize its institutional home. The media outlet wants to benefit from blogging’s popularity but appears afraid to cede control. Unlike the typical blog, this ones does not invite readers to respond at the end of her posts to what she has just written. While there is space elsewhere on the Post-Intelligence site to comment, there is no attempt to incorporate responses into her blog. The assumption appears to be that readers will passively consume the blog and experience no need to disagree, question, applaud or otherwise interact with the narrator. She also does not incorporate links to other media, bloggers or other online information into her posts either. Instead, the blog is selfcontained. These are not criticisms of Lyke per se, but rather comments on how her employer chose to interpret the blogging phenomenon. .05 Conclusion (return to index) News has been historically defined as a series of practices carried out by a particular set of institutions. The arrival of blogging seems to challenge some of these accepted practices as well as the notion that news is produced only by professional institutions. Drawing on an economic term, the informal or black market economy, as a conceptual metaphor, this essay has suggested that blogging can be seen as informal or black market journalism while formal journalism is that practiced by most mainstream corporate media. Thus, the blogging phenomenon has come about in part because of deficiencies within the mainstream media. In response, various informal or black market journalism efforts in the form of current events or news blogs have become increasingly popular. Three news blogs that focused on a single event http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 9/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface – the U.S. war with Iraq in the spring of 2003 – were examined here. These blogs appeared to exhibit the qualities of black market journalism in varying degrees. Where is Raed, created by Salam Pax, was the most informal of the three with a personal, opinionated voice that told the story of the war from his own experiences. His site was an independent creation with no sponsorship or gatekeepers; readers were invited to participate through comments. Links to other bloggers clearly locate Salam in the blogosphere. Back in Iraq 2.0 was similar but also exhibited links to more formal journalism – both through the blogger’s own background and some of his narrative and information collection practices. The PostIntelligencer blog was the least informal as the blogger followed many formal journalism practices – attending press briefings, refraining from voicing opinions about the war, etc. in her posts. Readers were not part of the blog. This blog suggests that mainstream or formal journalism is being influenced by the informal practices of bloggers and will adapt certain elements, most likely the informal first-person blog voice, but to what extent mainstream media will allow complete expression of opinions and meaningful audience participation is unclear. While Where is Raed and Back in Iraq show some of the positive aspects of informal journalism, other blogging practices suggest that informal journalism could pose some problems. Just as black market products do not have to meet safety standards, so may “unregulated” blog voices – while meeting a need – might also be abusive and be themselves manipulated. Lack of professionalization may lead to lies, half truths and vitriolic voices. Without institutional affiliation, how do we know blogs are reliable? Bloggers themselves argue that they are self righting – that anything printed in a blog can and likely will be fact-checked online, thus revealing veracity or the lack thereof. Further, some bloggers argue that formal journalism has become increasingly unreliable itself. Interestingly, a bigger concern may well be the relationship between the informal journalism of independent bloggers and formal, mainstream journalism. Clearly, as the Post-Intelligencer blog reveals, big media companies are already participating in the blogging phenomenon; the question is to what extent will they influence or perhaps even exploit informal blogging. For example, if bloggers are willing to run blogs for free, will media organizations ultimately co-opt them in some way to offset their own news collecting costs (sub-contracting to a virtual sweatshop of poorly paid writers)? Or will mainstream media overwhelm the blogosphere with their own watered down blogs, thus diluting the originality of the informal blogs or perhaps appropriating their audiences? Whatever the future for news blogs, their arrival has not come about simply because technology enabled them to happen, but because of changes in the practices of journalism. News as we have known it may become a much different social product in years to come, heralding a new paradigm for what we consider to be news and news media. .06 References (return to index) http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2938 10/16 6/24/2014 Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news | Interface Allan, S. (2002). Reweaving the Internet: Online news of September 11. In B. Zelizer & S. 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