We Need a New Word
We’re having a discussion right now at outside.in about whether our language in a message about to go out to our users should address bloggers or publishers. If we say “bloggers” the publishers don’t recognize it as being addressed to them. If we say “publishers” on the other hand, the bloggers don’t recognize it as being theirs.
Meanwhile, Jay Rosen is tweeting “can we just drop the quotes from “citizen journalist” now?” I say that’s fine, but what does that really get you?
What we really need is a new word, one that means “writer, online or off, working for a publication, or on their own as a blogger, paid or unpaid, writing about current topics and driving the public debate”.
That’s where we are today, that’s the state of things. Journalist and blogger are two ends of the same spectrum of people who write about things every day and drive public conversations forward. Are they so different that they should have totally different titles?
I say one word for both of them, and then you can create sub-categories of this word to mean “gets paid and does it full-time” or “doesn’t get paid, does it on the side”.
Why hasn’t that word been created yet?
What would that word be?
July 24th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
clearly the word you’re looking for is “dudes.” alternately, just start your missives with “hey, you guys.”