So what’s a blog and does it matter? Google News has started – arbitrarily it seems – applying the ‘(blog)’ label to some sites and not others.
It’s all a bit weird, says the Nieman Journalism Lab’s Zachary M. Seward.
“On both technical and philosophical levels, there’s no meaningful difference between blogs that publish news and news sites that aren’t published as blogs. Many news organizations place material on both types of platforms without considering the content any different. Some use blogging software like WordPress to produce sites that look nothing like blogs.”
His analogy explains it brilliantly:
“Dividing content along these lines is like classifying brownies based on whether they were baked in aluminum or glass pans. There’s no difference, and it obscures what you really want know: if they contain chocolate chips.”