Are Blogs the Future of Journalism?

jnf82 writes "Recently bloggers were part of the forces compelling Trent Lott to resign as Senate majority leader and Dan Rather to apologize to viewers on national television -- leaving many to ponder if blogs could someday supplant traditional journalism. More likely they'll become a 'fifth estate' keeping watch over mainstream media and politics, says Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell in Foreign Policy Magazine's current issue. So will the new media revolution be blogged? 'No,' says Anna Marie Cox, author of Wonkette, 'A revolution requires that people leave their house.'"

Comments

Re:Blogs are not Journalism.

[say]

Maybe the majority in straight amount of information, but not at all the majority of what the people of western nations get to watch on TV, read in newspapers etc. All channels I've got (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, CNN, EuroNews) have correspondents in Ukraine.

After all, this is Europe's second largest country.

Googlezon: Media Circa 2014

[victor_the_cleaner]

I think this ties in nicely...what do journalists think is the future of news?

Check out EPIC. http://robinsloan.com/epic/

EPIC is a presentation by the Poynter Institutue on the future of news. It's presented as a documentary from the year 2014. Google buys Amazon, and forms Googlezon...the New York Times goes offline....

It's an interesting view.

A short history of American Political Parties

[davidwr]

The Federalists lived from the 1790s through the 1810s.

The Republicans, aka the Anti-Federalists, are the ancestor to today's Democratic party. They started in the 1790s and split into the "Democratic Republicans" (later "Democrats") and the "National Republican Party" in the 1820s. The National Republicans had similar ideals as the former Federalist party.

In the 1830s, the National Republicans died out and the Whigs arose. The Whigs died out in the 1850s.

The 1830s-1850s also saw a number of viable third parties that never held the Presidency, including the Anti-Mason Party, the Free-Soil Party, and the Know-Nothing Party.

Today's Republican party was formed in the 1850s by former Whigs and Free-Soilers, primarly as an anti-slavery party. Most former Know-Nothings joined this new party.

By the 1870s, the modern Democratic and Republic Parties pretty much controlled politics, but minor parties continued to play spoiler, king-maker, and otherwise keep the major parties in line.

These third parties included the Populist Party (1790s), the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party (1910s), American Independent (1968), the Reform Party (1990s), as well as splinter groups of the major parties such as the Dixiecrats (1948). Perennial minor parties also play spoiler, as the Greens did in 2000.

This doesn't even get into the local and regional impact of "minor parties" and independent candidates and officeholders, such as Vermont's Congressman Bernie Sanders.

Sources:
The Green Papers - 2004 Election
Copernicus Election Watch - The Parties
Dixiecrats
1968 election
2000 election