I was introduced to social media and civic journalism guru Jay Rosen's blog today, and stumbled upon what I felt was a fascinating post summarizing the major points of the journalists vs. bloggers debate. Of course, the post was written in defense of bloggers, but nevertheless it highlighted some of the key issues, one of which is the tension between "traditional" journalism and blogging.
Rosen's summary is far better than anything I could write, so I suggest taking at least a cursory scan - but essentially the gist is that journalism holds in high regard its role as an "objective" source of "primary source verified" information, and really, blogging flies in the face of all that. Blogs are transparent, updated quickly and (hopefully) often, participatory, messy and subjective. While most serious bloggers certainly avoid mistakes, I believe the value does not emerge from the original post, but from the social processes surrounding it - the open debate, the longitudinal (time) and latitudinal (blogs) tracking of post "topics", the cross-blog engagement, the public empowerment. What eventually emerges from this process is a picture of the topic - there really is no striving for "100% truth." This news format threatens journalism as it has been practiced at least the past three decades. The average citizen now (theoretically) has access to the same information as the journalist, and has the ability to publish anything with (theoretically) the same audience penetration, and it's ok if they make mistakes. I can just hear the hoardes of journalists now: "You mean I've been sending my articles through the cubicle gauntlet of fact-checkers all this time, and now anyone can post anything online and it's considered news? Puh-LEEZ."
Now, for the real question: What effect will this have on innovative assessment across the med ed:practice continuum?

