"Amateur" bloggers
John Naughten shoots back at arrogant journalists who decry the prominent placing of 'amateur' blogs on google searches.
True, bloggers are an impressive outlet for anybody's free speech. And journalists are professionals in the sense that they are paid to write, while most bloggers are amateurs in the sense that we are not. However, that misses the point. People who search for a topic wants accuracy in reporting. They want, presumably, facts. They don't care if the writer put the words in print to pay his mortgage, as opposed to just having a strong desire to share his ideas with people. And bloggers may be amateur writers, but they tend to be educated and experienced professionals in something else.
Some few mainstream media outlets actually use e.g. writers with a real science background to write about science. Mostly, however, journalists are jack-of-all-trade writers who know a little (often very little) about a wide range of subjects. On the other hand, quite a few science bloggers are professional scientists or students of science. The blog community concists of historians, lawyers, military people, health professionals and of course a large number of computer experts.
Amateurs? When these people write about topics they are highly educated to write about, they are much more likely to provide good insights than a journalist with no specific background who has a looming deadline preventing him or her to really become familiar with the topic at hand.
8:16:00 PM 
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