Jay Rosen has a long and thoughtful post about what drives the ongoing rivalry between “bloggers” and “journalists.”   He points to five sources of stress on journalists, driven by the rise of blogging:

One: A collapsing economic model, as print and broadcast dollars are exchanged for digital dimes.

Two: New competition (the loss of monopoly) as a disruptive technology, the Internet, does its thing.

Three. A shift in power. The tools of the modern media have been distributed to the people formerly known as the audience.

Four: A new pattern of information flow, in which “stuff” moves horizontally, peer to peer, as effectively as it moves vertically, from producer to consumer. Audience atomization overcome, I call it.

Five. The erosion of trust (which started a long time ago but accelerated after 2002) and the loss of authority.

From my time in a newsroom, this list rings true. All the stuff  above is stressing out the journalists I worked with, whether they fully realize it or not.

But what’s stressful for traditional journalists is liberating for bloggers who are doing journalism themselves. And that outlook is what motivates a lot of the bloggers with hyperlocal news sites.

Here’s the flip side of Rosen’s list, seen from a blogging journalist’s perspective:

• One: The collapse of the traditional advertising model frees up money for blogging journalists, many of whom have other jobs, and who started their sites as a hobby.  Digital dimes don’t feed the family, but they can help blogging journalists buy a few extra things they couldn’t have afforded otherwise.
• Two: Competition? What competition? Blogging journalists have nothing to lose, so they’re usually ready to cooperate at every turn. Being open to cooperation, instead of protective of an existing business, leads to innovation in coverage, and a better product.
• Three: As beneficiaries of the media power shift, blogging journalists don’t often think in terms of “us” and “the audience.” For many hyperlocal sites, for example, the concept of audience participation is baked into the coverage from the beginning. Besides, when you’re a 1-person operation, accepting help from others is not really optional.
• Four: The peer-to-peer spread of information is great for blogging journalists, partly because audiences have shifted their expectations about what they’re reading in the news. Starting with the rise of 24/7 coverage, readers have begun to realize that real-time journalism can lead to some speculation — and they’re okay with that, as long as the speculation is clearly labeled. Blogging journalists are often more willing to post a piece of the story, letting readers in on the coverage process as it happens.
• Five: Trust is much easier to build as a person than as an institution. And this is where blogging journalists shine.  Hyperlocal bloggers are part of the community. The most successful ones don’t remain detached, but let their personalities seep into the news coverage. People respond to that — and earning the trust of a community is invigorating. That trust alone is enough to keep many blogging journalists motivated.

The stresses of hyperlocal bloggers are entirely different from those of traditional journalists. For the most part, they’re self-imposed: “I need to post more often,” or “I could be making more sales calls on clients.”

For traditional journalists, the stresses are institutional–built into the nature of their jobs and the businesses they work for. That’s why the rivalry between “journalists” and “bloggers” will continue to exist, even after most of the other distinctions between the two have broken down.