Foreign correspondents increasingly source from weblogs

Foreign correspondents covering China rely increasingly on weblogs, writes Rebecca MacKinnon, assistant professor at the journalism school of the Hong Kong University, in a paper for the World Journalism Education Conference this week in Singapore. From Singapore she writes:

Many people here at the conference found it surprising that blogs are already having such a substantial impact on foreign journalists' China coverage. Another finding that surprised people was that a lot of working journalists (unlike most people who study or write about journalism) find it useless to ask whether blogs in general are more or less "reliable" or "credible" than some other medium. Journalists evaluate each blog according to its individual merits, depending on what is known about the blogger's background and track record.

Her paper illustrates the argument that webloggers and professional journalists are not at loggerheads, but increasingly complement each other. There are specific reasons why weblogs have a larger influence on the China coverage than possibly elsehwere in the world, MacKinnon acknowledges, for example:

- The China story in the international media is not dominated by military conflict or any one obvious single storyline;
- The China story is not generally a "breaking story," but rather a "process story" about how this complex and geopolitically important country is changing, and what that change means for the rest of the world;
- There is strong demand for specialist insight, information and analysis on a range of subjects;

More arguments at her weblog. The full paper can be downloaded here.