It's not a new concern.  Some, particularly those in the journalism industry, don't think highly of the blogging phenomenon.  Robert Niles, at the Online Journalism Review, tackles the question of the legitimacy of the blog by posing this question to a number of pros in the biz: 

Apparently, Niles has been noticing some chatter lately from journalists growing frustrated by the traffic, exposure, and readers being snatched away from traditional news sources by the blogosphere.  Particularly frustrating, they say, is that journalists continue to do the hard news searching… and digging… in effect, all the work.  Their stories then get picked up by bloggers who write about them and generate the real buzz on the Internet.

 

Niles sent the above question out to a group of professors, journalists, and bloggers to see what the professionals thought.  The overwhelming response was that blogs are not parasitic and actually benefit the journalism community.  As several of the respondents pointed out, a lot of popular blogs create as much, or more, original content as they do link-style journalism.  And more often than not, bloggers have a unique take on the news written by journalists and often focus on different angles or approaches to reporting the news.

 

The article got me thinking about the nature of the blog.  Obviously, most bloggers are going to support the idea of blogging as a legitimate medium.  And based on the number of people reading blogs on a daily basis, I'd say the majority of Internet users see blogging in the same way.

 

So the question becomes:  what can bloggers and journalists do to better serve one another?  It's possible for both mediums to co-exist in a successful fashion.  Look at The Washington Post's website.  Each article contains a list of links to blogs who've mentioned the story.  It's a great back and forth relationship.  Bloggers get traffic from Washington Post articles and the Washington Post gets traffic from bloggers covering their news.

 

Why aren't other traditional news outlets embracing the exchange of readers like that?  It's worked well for growing the blogosphere and I'd imagine it'd work equally well for traditional media.  Journalists and newspapers need to start embracing the ways people get information these days and stop fighting it.  Because I can guarantee the trend is only going to continue.