DISQUS

Thoughts from an actual sometime journalist:

This is a false dichotomy.

A blog is a medium, not a type of writing.
Someone is a blogger because they write in a blog.
It is unfortunate that we now consider a blogger as some different type of writer than one who works on paper or elsewhere.

Writing in a blog can be as neutral and as fact-based as what we hope for in other forms of journalism or it can be as opinionated and non-fact-based as it wants -- or it can be somewhere in between

Whatever it is, it depends on building trust with the reader. That trust comes in a number of different ways. If you want to be known as a reliable source than you make your writing as accurate and fact-based as you can. On the other hand, I have a blog where I make fun of things -- news events, business, marketing -- I build trust with my readers by being funny. I make it very clear that what they are getting is opinion only inadvertently laced with facts.

The big difference between a journalist with credentials and someone who doesn't have those credentials is this:

The former has a branded venue and was hired to work there because his or her employer thinks he or she has the needed expertise to write for them. The latter is a writer who works without someone else’s brand certification.

Being a long-time journalist, it's not surprising that I have a bias in favor of brand certified writers. However, I do not think that certification means a writer is either better or worse than someone without it. It just means he or she is more experienced. Journalists make a lot of mistakes and people who are not or have not been paid to be journalists find and tell a lot of very good, fact-based stories.

The wonderful thing about this interwebs with all its tubes and blogs is now everyone has a chance to find an audience for their writing. A lot of people are also finding out what journalists have a lot of experience with -- your credibility is your most important asset and it is always on the line.

Until I saw the actual item on Mashable, I thought you had just come up with a brilliant piece of satire on their "XX things you need" lists. I was slackjawed to see that it was Mashable itself that came up with the satire.

They taste like kids' medicine. Took a bite of one and spit it out. This takes gilding the lilly to a whole new level.