Bloggers not real journalists according to survey

Stan Beer
Friday, 21 July 2006 19:36

Your IT - Home IT

Apple argued the case unsuccessfully a couple of months ago, but according to a recent survey, bloggers are not real journalists but merely mostly young people talking about their lives.

According to the study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, titled “Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet’s New Storytellers,” there are 12 million bloggers in the US and 57 million blog readers.

More than half (54%) of the bloggers have never been published elsewhere and the same proportion are under the age of 30, with a roughly equal split between males and females.

The findings of the survey contend that by far the main topic of bloggers is their personal experiences, distantly followed by politics, entertainment, sports and news and business. Just 4% of bloggers focus on technology, according to the survey.

Commentators contend that the survey findings indicate that vast majority of bloggers are not real journalists. What's more, bloggers do not consider themselves to be journalists but merely hobbyists.

In the tech space at least, there are quite a few bloggers funded by media organizations and IT vendors. It is not clear whether these were included in the report.