The, somewhat obvious, problem to what you’re suggesting is that bloggers aren’t professionals and largely don’t get paid. It’s not a career, it’s a hobby or at most a stepping stone to a career.

Self-proclaimed “pro-bloggers” are simply just online journalists/columnists.

What you’re saying with “blogging 3.0″ is that you want bloggers to become journalists. But then, what would the journalists do? Exactly what they are doing, they’ll become bloggers – their fact checking will suffer, copious amounts of bias and presumption will slip into their work, etc.

I think if traditional media (whether it remains in print form, or online) needs to grab hold tightly to what they are – reputable. They’ve (intentionally or not) blurred this line in the last several years in an effort to compete with bloggers but that’s because they don’t have faith in people’s ability to seek out quality.

If traditional media continues to pour resources (read: money) into maintaining a quality product, they will not have to compete with your average bloggers. And the “bloggers” they do have to compete with won’t really be bloggers, they’ll be journalists (perhaps disguised as bloggers) – and that sort of competition keeps everyone sharp.

Sorry about that flowery metaphor in the previous sentence, I’m a bit excited about a match I saw yesterday.

I suspect that if blogs received nearly the same scrutiny as traditional media did (and devoted as much legwork to tracking down stories instead of just riding shotgun on traditional media so often) there would be a lot less congratulatory posting, but we’d all be better for it. Say what you will about newspaper columnists/stringers and the drivel they print, but they work on a deadline, are pushed to meet it more and more these days and don’t have the benefit of a good night’s rest and rumination on someone else’s piece – they are bringing the orb up the field.

Personally, I have no idea what China 3.0 is. I’d like to see blogging 3.0 though: a little less wild conjecture, the same amount of dogged fact checking (that some do), and much less circle-jerk atmosphere among the lads.

Furthermore, to deduce that this all came about because of the pressure and competition coming from blogs is, imo, rather fanciful.

The nepalise police photos is an entirely different argument and in my opinion came about through either general ignorance of Asian culture/politics, an over-eager picture editor, or a combination of the two and not the growing power of blogs.

you can write all day about evil conglomerates and the wonders of 2.0, but at the end of the day it was a mistake. Not the first and not the last. The internet may highlight these mistakes (as in the Nepalise photo) more than ever before, and we are better off for that, but it certainly isn’t the cause.

What I propose is a large Masons type society, long term mutual benefits for members, and a code of practice. To join you have to blog well and establish yourself in a nice. Almost there, just need a code.

In an effort to financially compete with bloggers, community journalism and various other UGC media, the old media corporations cut staff and resources until they can’t but make stupid errors like the one above.

And I think you’re wrong, largely this is a new problem. Maybe not as new as the concept of Web 2.0 and the blogsphere, but definitely only a couple decades old – starting when conglomerates started buying up media outlets, big and small, so that editorial decisions were decided in boardrooms not newsrooms.

Obviously this isn’t universal, and business has always been a key component of the media. But now you have massive amalgamations, cut backs in staff and resources and fierce (if somewhat less professional) competition from legions of people doing it for free or next to free.

The problem, which was so clearly illustrated above, and more dangerously illustrated during last year’s Tibetan riots (when news agencies famously ran images of Nepalese police in place of Chinese) is not a case of infallibility, but ridiculously careless actions.

WTF is China 3.0? And it has a backside? Where’s its frontside?

But what does this have to do with old media v new media? no-one ever claimed old media was infallible did they? news to me if they did…

So this example really exposes “cracks” in the old media sytem? Maybe, but in that case they are the same cracks that have been around for centuries (lazy journalists are nothing new).

sounds to me more like China 3.0 disappearing up its own backside again. for every crappy AFP journalist, I’ll give you 200 bloggers (many of them journalists). Sound about fair?

(*though, of course, not speaking for my employers or anyone else in mainstream or other media)