Peter Griffin: Bloggers snap at heels of mainstream media

They can't all be journalists. Or so I thought as I stood in line for a press pass at the E3 video games expo in Los Angeles last week.

The queue for "media accreditation" to the world's biggest gaming festival wound around the back of the Los Angeles Convention Centre, ending in pandemonium in a little white tent.

I spent three hours standing in that line, the sweat trickling down my back. It was long enough to find out that no, they weren't all journalists. Or not what I would describe as journalists. Some of my queue-mates were "bloggers" - web diarists essentially, and contributors to gaming news websites.

They fired out reports from E3 to websites like Damnedmachines.com, Gamesarefun.com and Geekonstun.com. They had the latest gaming news out before I returned to the hotel to pen my own stories. So what separates me, a "mainstream" reporter, from them?

With a few hundred people in the line for press passes at E3, the organisers didn't stop to debate the difference. Bloggers weren't officially on the invitation list, but as dozens of young video game buffs turned up waving business cards and printouts of their online columns, it was impossible to turn them away.

The video games industry needs these people, maybe even more than the mainstream media.

The E3 press queue chaos was symbolic of that uneasy place bloggers find themselves in at the moment - midway between being credible outlets for news and opinion and unfiltered mouthpieces for those with internet connections and something to say.

Of the 10 million or so bloggers posting their thoughts to the web, most are the latter. They'll comment on anything - from what they think of the new Apple Mac operating system or Revenge of the Sith to Newsweek's bogus story about the Koran being washed down the toilet. Objectivity, good taste and accuracy often go out the window.

But a smaller group of bloggers, many of them with journalistic backgrounds, are becoming influential commentators, even agenda setters.

In the US they congregate at Dailykos.com, Huffingtonpost.com, Instapundit.com, Buzzmachine.com and Wonkette.com. They're bloggers who know what they're talking about. Locally, you can find them at Publicaddress.net.

Thousands of other bloggers authoritatively cover their chosen industries. In film, Joblo.com and Aintitcoolnews.com are almost as important news outlets as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.

They're not denting newspaper circulation or eroding TV audiences, but they are diverting some of the attention of a large audience that has grown discontented with the biases and mistakes of what bloggers term the "MSM" (mainstream media).

Now there's growing acceptance in the US that rules and guidelines have to be set for them to operate within, especially as bloggers look to enter the White House as official media and begin sitting on the press bench beside mainstream reporters.

The bloggers are building a framework of collectivism to legitimise themselves. The Media Bloggers Association (Mediabloggers.org) is "promoting the explosion of citizen's media" and has hundreds of bloggers as members.

At Cyberjournalist.net, a non-profit think tank devoted to online journalism, the ground rules for bringing credibility to blogging are in the process of being set. But a lot more will have to be done, especially if the scenario envisioned by Craig Newmark, the founder of the popular classified advert website Craigslist.org, comes to pass.

Newmark wants "talented amateurs" to form a team of investigative journalists that will sniff out big stories and publish them on Craigslist and blogging sites.

Early attempts at self-regulation are commendable. But blogging by and large is still representative of the Wild West element of the web.

That's because you're more likely to declare a conflict of interest, or double-check some dubious facts if your job is at stake. Most bloggers do their work for fun.

And when your stories go through the safety net of three or four levels of editing, mistakes are more likely to be weeded out before publication.

Blogging is the future of self-expression and, to some extent, of breaking news. The infamous Drudge Report (drudgereport.com) is a prime example of that. But bloggers collectively have a lot of work ahead of them to ensure they don't fall victim to the same mistakes of the nasty old MSM.