Bloggers, Journalists, and Community

Excuse me for a moment while I take a break from the normal bike-related content on this site and address the Gizmodo story. To me, it’s interesting how the usage of blogger and journalist gets intertwined, depending on the story and changes with the point being made. In different contexts, whether bloggers are journalists or not has come up in the past ten years. Often blogs like Gizmodo use the description as it suits them. Don’t play by the same rules as traditional media because were bloggers, but want the respect of the journalist title and entitlements. 

When they turned off the TVs at CES at few years ago, they were bloggers, Gawker (parent of Gizmodo) defended their actions saying basically they don’t play by the same rules. When the cops come a knockin, they’re journalists.

cops

I’ve never found myself in possession of a stolen, or not stolen, prototype phone or bike. I’ve also never thought of myself as a journalist. I’ve been blogging since we first called it that. Not sure if the search was legal, not a lawyer either. The most troubling thing is I’ve not seen camps get divided like this about Apple so fast. Apple as a villain is an entirely new web phenomena.

Do Not like iTunes DRM! Sure, you can make that case, but now it’s playing out as conspiracies and villains and horrible things are being said in comment threads. Whenever it happened, the art of arguing, even flaming, got lost in responses that go straight to F-bomb you and your mother.

What Gizmodo has done with that iPhone Prototype is shown the ugly side of the Internet. We’ve got a good community here, on Twitter, and Facebook and have very little flaming or hate. I appreciate it and think you likely share my concerns about the Internet these days.

Now back to bikes. Check out FreMo: India’s First Bicycle Sharing Program.

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