What is reporting?

Wednesday, March 07, 2007 by Dave Winer.

Derrick Schneider: "Reporting is just a genre of writing, alongside essays and stories, and blogggers most certainly fall into that genre." 

Imho, when they talk about reporting on a show like Frontline, they mean the process a reporter goes through. 

1. Interviews, research. 

2. Assemble a story. 

3. Fact-checking and editing. 

4. Publishing. 

Most bloggers aren't doing this whole thing. Our process is different, and I'd argue no less rigorous, just more distributed, and step 2 is something everyone does for themselves. 

Key point in last night's piece -- sources are part of the reporting process, and more and more, the sources are becoming bloggers.