Blog as new media

Last quiz had the question about blog. What is a blog? The right answer: it’s a platform for publishing. I have answered right, but in fact I don’t think it :) I think a blog is new media.

A means of communication
This is the old discussion of what is journalism on the Internet. The old media has discovered a new era on the Internet. They established there their brands and all the people thought that in short time the Internet would be a channel only for the distribution of information. Blogs have been carried in other groups like the chat or forum. I really remember users convinced each other blogs are not forums, because they are different.
From the very beginning of mass usage blogs have been positioned as a means of communication. Due to this attribute blogs and online-journalism don't have anything in common. Old media was journalism, blogs was a hobby.

Changes came very soon
The old newspapers understood that they could not be on the Internet like exact copy of print issue. Moreover it’s possible to create a kind of issues that exists on the Internet, online only!
Do you think it always was? Such an issue was demonstrated for our group as new approach in Czech in 2007. The first online issues started in Russia about 2001-2002 (Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru).
This professional online-journalism even more forced interactivity, which is the main attribute of the Internet.
In other side the blogs even more have been occupied by journalists and different writers, (then by politics, then by marketers) for “serious deals”. And the most serious deal is that journalists discovered in private diaries new source of information and new competitors.

First plan and second plan
The blog is a platform for publishing, of cause. But it’s the first plan only. Next, the blog is new media. “New” is because of interactivity. “Media” is because of gathering and distributing of the news.
Blogs still have less amount of news than old media. It’s that the studies notice, which keep on discussion on the Internet about reconstruction of American Journalism.
Do blogs need to catch up to the old media in the amount of news? I’m not sure. It’s an alternative system which does not replace the old.