As soon as I started writing for this blog, I got the impression that in some form, blogging is going to affect my journalistic working life and not just my private, ideological, libertarian part. A good article in Tech Central Station by Dominic Busulto makes for an excellent overview of the phenomenon and how writing about business and analyzing companies will change as a result.
Certainly, in my brief experience, the arrival of the weblog has already started to affect how I work. When I get in to work in the morning I usually scan my firm’s website (www.reuters.co.uk) before looking at various websites pitched at the financial world to see what other news organisations have been reporting on. But I also click on to certain blogs for current affairs and related financial news. Very often I find that a blog, like that of prolific Glenn Reynolds will have unearthed an important news story or theme which would have been missed by the mainstream media. And this surely beats the hell out of trawling through acres of newsprint, although I do have an incurable need to read the printed sports section of the Daily Telegraph.
Very soon, I think, blogging will be the accepted form of business analysis by economists and journalists in the City and Wall Street when it comes to checking out company results, mulling over future trends, or trying to figure out what investors think. Analysts, who have been chastened by the collapse of U.S. energy giant Enron and concerns about the financial results of leading companies, will increasingly not be able to get away with issuing grand press releases giving their views, but instead have to see their ideas challenged, chewed over and discussed through the vibrant medium of the blog. The same goes for news columnists who like to make guesses about the future.
Journalists are going to have to become blog-savvy. I guess this puts yours truly in a nice position. Still, I haven’t yet figured how we get to be millionaires out of this. Let’s just say I am working on the notion.
