A Symbiotic Relationship between Journalists and Bloggers

By Richard Davis

A paper by Richard Davis, spring 2008 fellow, analyzes how political bloggers are affecting traditional journalism. How is a community with long-held traditions and professional norms being affected by a community that seemingly plays by its own rules? What is the nature of the relationship between these two players? The thesis of this paper is that journalists and bloggers have formed a relationship based not just on conflict and competition, but also on co-dependency. They battle one another, but they also have influenced each other’s approaches to their shared task of news and information dissemination.

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