It seems the point­less ham­ster wheel of jour­nal­ists vs. blog­gers is spin­ning up again along with the Large Hadron Col­lider. This one though, is more likely to pro­duce a black hole than the LHC as the two camps dis­ap­pear up their own col­lec­tive ori­fices. Why, oh why, I ask, do the “pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ists” in their ivory tow­ers (and no few blog­gers down in the muck) per­sist with the false dichotomy that they are on oppos­ing sides?

This time, it’s (very) old school jour­nal­ist and for­mer edi­tor of the Aus­tralian, Mark Day, lay­ing his pol­ished Oxford into the baggy-​​jean wear­ing back­side of the bloggers.

Mark, why? Jour­nal­ism as we have known it is an endan­gered species. You need your friends where you can find them.

I felt com­pelled to com­ment on Mark’s piece, which in a bit of deli­cious irony, is actu­ally on his blog at The Aus­tralian. I don’t know whether he’ll pub­lish it, the Aus­tralian tends to be very slow at approv­ing com­ments. As such, I’m repro­duc­ing it here in the inter­ests of history.

Mark, as a blog­ger and one-​​time jour­nal­ist, I agree with you that many peo­ple who com­ment on blogs are asi­nine or dis­re­spect­ful. I haz­ard they are the same fringe who in the past wouldn’t have been pub­lished in let­ters to the editor.

George Mega­lo­ge­nis is entirely within his rights to estab­lish rules of engage­ment for his blog, as is any blog author out there. The estab­lish­ment of such rules are some­thing I strongly advise my clients to do when, as a part of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gies I help them develop, they ven­ture into blog­ging as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions medium.

It appears you make the assump­tion that the writ­ing done in the name of jour­nal­ism as a pro­fes­sion is some­how bet­ter or more accu­rate than that done in blog­ging form. Or that blog­gers don’t have access to the sources and infor­ma­tion that jour­nal­ists do. I strongly dis­agree. There is rich­ness in both forms, as equally, there is pap. There are also blog­gers with sig­nif­i­cant access to sources close to power and impor­tant infor­ma­tion — that which would “[cre­ate] news”, as you say.

The issues repeat­edly trot­ted out that seek to belit­tle blog­gers of all stripes as some lesser being to jour­nal­ists are spe­cious at best. The world needs both and to con­tinue to per­pet­u­ate the false dichotomy that one is bet­ter than the other is ridicu­lous. The rela­tion­ship between pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ists and blog­gers, in today’s largely online world is sym­bi­otic. They need each other.

In a world where the her­itage organ­i­sa­tions who to now have been the pur­vey­ors of news are remov­ing jour­nal­ists from roles, the jour­nal­ists and the blog­gers need to work together to empower them­selves. To rein­vent the media in a new form where the Fair­faxes and News Lim­it­eds of this world see their already shrink­ing rel­e­vance reduced to irrel­e­vance. This is not fan­tasy or pie in the sky, it’s reality.

I don’t know about you, but think it’s about time this ridicu­lous false argu­ment was silenced once and for all. We could then just get on with the job of writ­ing good stuff and find­ing the news, no mat­ter where it is and no mat­ter who’s break­ing it.