Journalists and bloggers could both learn from the other's experience

By Brian Baer
fredericksburg.com

Date published: 2/19/2006

Waldo Jaquith owns no printing press. His distribution is exactly zero. And his "newsroom" consists of just one person: Jaquith.

Still, in Charlottesville media circles, the 27-year-old blogger occasionally carries as much weight as the local Media General daily paper.

Ideas generated on his blog, cville news.com, sometimes spark stories in other publications and--Jaquith says--reporters from local papers regularly troll his site for story ideas, feedback, and sources.

He takes that as a compliment.

When he started the blog five years ago, that's exactly how he envisioned it working.

"I don't pretend to be a journalist," Jaquith said. "I don't know anything about journalism, and I'm horrified that someone might use me as a primary source of news."

Still, he's delighted to have the attention of mainstream journalists in Charlottesville.

Other than having one person serving as an entire operation, his model isn't much different from traditional news outlets.

"When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong. When I don't know something, I say I don't know it," Jaquith said. "When I get a tip, I say, 'I don't know if this is real.' I try to set a good example."

And, he said, those of us who attended a traditional journalism school--who hold formal editing meetings and who publish newspapers or TV broadcasts--have nothing to fear from his blog.

In fact, if we're paying attention, he argues, we have everything to gain from his slice of cyberspace.

A few years ago, for instance, a user posted on cvillenews.com that his real-estate assessment had just gone up by one-third. Another poster noted that his had soared 40 percent. Other users made similar posts, and some mentioned that no local media had reported the story.

Fortunately, a local reporter was monitoring the blog and subsequently published a story that not only reported the news on the rising assessments, but also quoted posters from cvillenews .com as sources in the article.

"It was not just a motivator to do the story, but it was a source of interview subjects," Jaquith said. "And I'd like to think it worked for everybody."

It certainly worked for the readers and residents who learned more about the subject from the article.

Jaquith understands that mainstream media aren't always going to write about subjects he thinks are newsworthy.

Date published: 2/19/2006