Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 have a post up, basically saying that every journalist should start a blog. And of course, there’s rebuttals to this stance, which also shows in the post and comments.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with Scott. While journalists have lots to gain from blogging, there’s also the fact that a lot of them suck without an editor bringing out the best.

There, I said it. Self-publising isn’t necessary a good thing, editors save us from crappy grammar and hollow stories in the print world. Editors also tend to miss out on lots of that, proving that it’s not a universal law that print is better than web. But at least it’s another set of eyes on the writer’s piece of work, and that ups the chance of getting rid of errors. I know a lot of journalists, and have edited some, that definitely can’t be left with a Publish button.

Not all journalists should blog, it might end up biting them in the neck. In other words, just the good ones should get into blogging – the rest would do us all a favor by shutting up.

Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 3:32 am