Just back from KQED studio where we were doing a recording for CBC Radio in Canada, for the Sounds like Canada show hosted by Sheila Rogers. It was a surprisingly long show, 20 minutes or so, with Tod Maffin, broadcaster and futurologist and Jim Elves, who created a site called Blogs Canada. We talked about Tod's moblogging, and Jim's site, which is an attempt to organize the blogosphere for Canada. I said that in the beginning there was a lot of backlash against blogging because people thought the internet was getting "polluted" by all these people writing about what they had for breakfast, but I pointed out that the intended audience for those blogs was probably just that person's friends and family. I also said that one of the things that we had discussed at the CAJ conference on Friday was the difference between bloggers as "citizen reporters" and journalists. Journalists actually have some accountability, the reputation of the paper to uphold, and a phalanx of fact checkers employed by their paper. Bloggers, Jim said, are more like "Letters to the Editor" or the Op-Ed page fo the newspaper. And I think the future of weblogging is what you see over on the right hand side there: photoblogging. And photoblogging just for your friends and family.

It was fun, and now I'm glad to get back to bed. I'm almost never up this early. *Yawn*.

LINK | 7:59 AM | TB

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