Fact or Fiction?

After Tuesday’s class focusing on Miller/Shepherd’s “Blogging As Social Action” and Rettberg’s, Blogging, I finally realized how bloggers and journalist are waving across a very thin line. After having our group discussion analyzing the questions that were given, several questions arose like, are bloggers considered journalists, what makes a story credible, and who is actually considered a “citizen journalist”? The “citizen journalist” puts the blogger in the public eye, which makes it hard to differentiate journalists from bloggers. In today’s society blogs are the go to if anyone wants to find out information – true or not. Credible newspapers such as the New York Times or the Boston Journal are now having blogs on their websites while our favorite actors are creating blogs to speak about their life or issues that they find interesting.

Both Rettberg and Miller/Shepherd have the same expectation of how a blog can function as a genre, where as Rettbug goes into great detail by breaking it down into sub-genres. Rettberg suggests that genres have sub-genres that have certain limitations but certain expectations as well. We see sub-genres everywhere Sci tech blogs information should be factual with information sources that are credible. We see this in Lehrer's work where he blogs about several genres such as sports, beauty, depression, and so much more. 

Jonah Lehrer is a well-known sci tech blogger that had a lot of respect for being a credible source. He has written for The New Yorker, which alone puts him on a pedestal. To write for such a prestigious publication not only gives you clout but also your name is well known in the journalistic world. No one would have ever believed that Lehrer’s work would not be factual. I chose to do my first short assignment on Lehrer's essay on the "Future of Reading" so I was quite disappointed that he isn't a credible source. In actuality he was just plagiarizing the works of himself and others while saying it’s his own.  He misused information that he shared with his readers as his personal opinions/thoughts backed up with scientific facts/evidence. The readers assume that his blog's must only contain facts which ultimately makes it legitimate.  

Lehrer does this by referencing notable sources such as quotes from former quarterback Tim Hasselback and psychologists throughout his ESPN blog about quarterbacks and the Wonderlic results. 

“In order to become a professional athlete, you need a certain kind of obsessiveness. You've got to devote your life to the development of this very narrow expertise. It shouldn't be surprising that this takes lots of grit.” -- U of Penn psychologist Angela Duckworth

He also uses statistics throughout his blog. When I see numbers tied in with ‘facts’ I assume that they are true and that the writer has done their research.

“Many of the most successful quarterbacks in NFL history reportedly had subpar Wonderlic results. Donovan McNabb scored a 14 and Brett Favre a 22, while Randall Cunningham, Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw each scored 15.”

Lehrer is a prime example of how blogging without the fact checking creates issues such as copyright and misuse of information. So this leads me to the question are any blogs really credible? Fact or fiction?

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=6299428&type=story