Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
http://www.industelegraph.com
'tis but a scratch.
I bet this story is a dupe.
They are the future of unaccountable editorializing.
While i won't dedicate time to blogging. I can see the usefullnes of something that points out neat stories and useful information. I hope to see more blogging come to be.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Why read to an uneducated idiots opinion when you can read to an educated idiots opinion.
Journalists go out and find out what's going on, they (hopefully) check their sources out and get confirmation and input from both sides and then report on it. Commentators -- and this includes bloggers -- are consumers of what journalists generate. They add (or, some might argue, remove) value by way of interpretation.
Remember way back in like 1996 when we all expected the internet to give voice to the common man? Create a new golden age in the spirit of the pamphlet writer that would have Patrick Henry and the rest of the printing press crew smiling down on us? Well, that's what the blogs are -- the fact that some are regularly insightful/interesting/ignorant/funny/biased enough to gain relative popularity should not obscure that fact or cause us to think they're something beyond that.
Aside from that, I think it's important not to get too carried away with this whole "we busted Dan Rather" thing. Frankly, it reminds me of when Drudge got out in front of the Monica Lewinski thing; he got the story out, sure, and suddenly we were hearing all about how internet media was going to come out and crush the slow lumbering ten-minute-ago types on TV. But, as it turned out, that was *one time* as opposed to the hundreds of times before and since where he's been completely off-base and his "Flash!" stories have vanished without a trace.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Foreign Policy magazine is being linked to from Slashdot? What's next? Martha Stewart Living?
This article totally pisses me off as a large over-realistic view of back-patting feel-gooders. Say, lets go knock on the author's door and tell him what we think of him!
Oh wait, I have to do laundry today nevermind.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Thats the power of blogging and the weakness of blogging.
If you can use relevance algorithms you can find the good content, and that content has been the power behind a great deal of breaking news and commentary this year.
PageRank can serve as a de facto reputation system, combined with tools like Slash's own metamoderation.
In any case the death of large, centralized corporate media has been long overdue, our so-called bastions of truth have become nothing more than apologists for the status quo, be it in govt or business.
The problem is that blogs are filled with misinformation. People need news companies to filter out the crap.
Perhaps blogs will some day be fact checked, and reliable.
I hope that they'll encourage people to feel more involved with their community and government etc. This seems to be the ideal place to plug the plans for the new Blog:Vote which will try and encourage bloggers and general web-users to discuss policy issues at the next UK General election.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Blogs are the Weekly World News of journalism. For every useful piece of information you get from one there's 10,000 dorks out there flaming about how Bush is Hitler and Haliburton is running the government. They have no credibility and are just soap boxes for trolls.
Radio didn't replace newspaper journalism, nor did television replace radio journalism. Each developed to the strengths of its medium.
Blogs are merely a form of journalism that best exploit the features of their medium.
Blogs are the future of op-ed, not journalism.
Journalism might be published on the web but it's still going to be more about facts than about opinions.
It has been posted on 5+ blog sites. "News verified"
Instant Urban Legend News thanks to RSS and Google... LOL
Journalists go out and find out what's going on, they (hopefully) check their sources out and get confirmation and input from both sides and then report on it. Commentators -- and this includes bloggers -- are consumers of what journalists generate. They add (or, some might argue, remove) value by way of interpretation.
Dismissing blogs with a monsyllabic answer is utterly unfair. Are blogs the future of journalism? Hell no.
Blogs may become more popular, but I don't think they will completely supplant the traditional media. When you buy a newspaper, for example, part of what you pay for is the assumption that the stories are timely, accurate, unbiased, and fact-checked. With blogs, it's up to the reader to be discriminating.
So while some people may be happy reading all the information available to them and coming to their own conclusions, I think there will always be people who are willing to pay a traditional news service to separate the wheat from the chaff. There will probably also (unfortunately) be people who get all their "news" from blogs, but don't make the distinction between trustworthy and non-trustworthy sources. Since I would expect this to the majority of casual internet-readers, I worry that a lot of people will come away misinformed.
I think blogging does have a role to play as a check on the integrity of the traditional media, but I don't think it is anywhere near time for it to take over completely.
Someone should start a blog that keeps the community up-to-date on the latest news from the technology world.
News on games, programming, evil corps attempting to charge licenses for popular open source operating system kernels, and when there isnt much news to reports, it could just present the older news again....
Now.... what to call such a blog...
Prediction for next year's pet phrase: "Old people in Korea".
Considering this is posted on a blog claiming to be a news site, this is clearly from the slashdot-irony-meta-dept.
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
'No,' says Anna Marie Cox, author of Wonkette
Can somebody explain to me, please, why we're quoting a harpy whose chief claim to fame is dick and ass jokes?
"Is the economy improving? 'No,' says Lashonda Jefferson, whore who walks the corner of Sunset and 3rd."
Please.
I write in my journal
What is the point of blogs though? I thought they were to convey some sense of individuality on the old interweb. Instead, in everyone's rush to be some kind of blog king, blogs are forcing people think and express themselves in the same way. Stealing someone's ideas means you can't or don't come up with your own. Giving into the "nothing new under the sun" just means that if there is, it won't be from you.
Unfortunately, the 2004 USA Election has been a victory of FUD over Facts.
The mainstream forth estate news organizations, on both sides, have utterly failed to hold either Democrats or Republicans accountable for claims that diverge widely from the known facts. In cases where journalists have made a consistent argument, the news organization has allowed that position to be "shouted down" by political camp followers repeating the same lies over and over again though the same outlet. In those same replies, there was very rarely comments by the news organization when known facts obviously contradicted the opinion. Many news organizations seem unwilling to publicly chastise either party for continuing to avoid addressing serious questions when the facts do not concur. The result has been an outright failure of the concept of journalistic ethics.
Some alternative sources, be they partisan or bipartisan organizations, individuals, websites, documentaries, forums or the blogosphere, have done a better job at holding both sides accountable. Sadly, even the most popular alternative source reaches a small fraction of the audience covered by the mainstream media. However, to even that small fraction, those same sources have utterly failed to present an overall palatable, concise and coherent position to the opposing or undecided viewers.
The resulting output from both mainstream and alternative sources has only polarized each sides opinion of each other, further dividing the nation.
Democracy is effective only when a large majority of voters are capable of making an informed choice. In my opinion, the majority of voters, despite who they voted for, were badly served by those organizations who claim they are responsible for keeping the public informed. It's not as if the same could not be said for past elections in any country, but this election cycle the "Whopper" mud slinging has been so much worse than any election since the introduction of television.
What does this mean for the tech industry?
In a lot of ways, both sides campaigns are mirrored by Microsoft's unabated campaign of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ( commonly referred to in the information technology sector by the acronym FUD ). Microsoft's advocates probably consider the use of the same strategy by both Democrats and Republicans a green light to continue to spread FUD, despite the evidence which contradicts the claims, including Microsoft's own internal research. Any forum attached to an article that even hints at Linux being used on the desktop results in a similar barrage of FUD that is familiar in form to that spouted by the political camp followers. Microsoft's advocates claim the same thing happens whenever Microsoft's record of security is mentioned.
Whether choosing a political or consumer platform, it is possible to make an informed choice when the mainstream political or technical media performs its role to certain ethical standards.
From the International Federation of Journalists:
As was demonstrated in Dan Rather's Memo flap, bloggers can sometimes be good fact checkers. In that instance people from all over the Internet scoured over what turned out to be fake documents. One person would offer his expertise and another would do the same. Eventually some people were able to contact real experts in the field and get them to verify that the documents were fake. Eventually the mainstream media took notice and the rest is history.
But bloggers are definitely not journalists. At best they offer their opinions on the news of the day, correct factual problems in news that was reported, and they also serve as a rallying point for other like-minded individuals. At worst though, blogs can be full of rumormongoring, hate and just noise. They won't be replacing any journalists any time soon, though their diligence may get one fired every now and then.
--
Sounds like a scam, but it works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo | Free Nintendo DS
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
'A revolution requires that people leave their house.'
What about the "stay at home" revolution? Doesn't that one count?
It's not like the "mainstream" media is going to be ousted due to bloggers. More often than not, a news blog will merely link offsite to a more mainstream news site. I really like Google News simply because it gives you plenty of options as to which news source you choose to listen to. Take Google News/ It's like a newspaper except that it's updated frequently (like, on a minute-by-minute basis), or a TV broadcast except you don't need to watch it when they tell you to.
The news media will still find ways of making money... usually the same way they always have: Advertising. Granted, there are problems with the blog system.... Even here for example, slashdot pulled a Silly user bug up to the front page of slashdot with a heading saying that Firefox was not as stable as we originally thought, thus sending a hint of FUD along with the release of Firefox.
That being said, at google news the story about Firefox's release and how it has started to kick IE's ass sat on the front page for a good number of days. In fact, as of this posting, it's still 11th on the Science/Tech page.
Crap. I realize this is starting to sound like a plug for Google News... but christ... IT'S GOOD. It ranks the same way that it ranks web pages, which means the news stories people are talking about the most get put on the front page. Again, this isn't always reliable, but what single news source is? At least with Google news they have a "all 523 related" link so you can try to corroborate between different news sources and see if you can inch out the truth from those.
Blogs just seem a smarter way to distribute news. The nice thing about this application of the internet (as opposed to say... MP3s) is that stuff like this is likely to get full backing from the news industry. After all, news blogs are just trying to serve the same purpose as the news media: Inform people as to what's going on in the world.
Karma: Non-Heinous
With a single-party controlling the Executive & Legislative, and arguably in charge of the Judiciary, combined with a virtual Plutocracy in the ownership of the major media outlets, the U.S. needs to have SOMETHING to counter the propoganda. So far, Blogs have done the best job of filling in this need.
I count Slashdot in this group, especially with the coverage of the electronic voting fiasco starting here long before the election. The mainstream media have had very little coverage of the voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida, but the memes are alive due to dKos and Wonkette, among others.
And where would be without the power of Fark???? (only slightly kidding)
Oh, and Wonkette is full of it on this subject. Revolutions can happen in any form, not just "people in the street" - in fact, in the U.S. today marching for your cause is the most sure way to get ignored - "who cares about what all those hippies think?" is the common reaction, negating any gains made by the exposure.
Revolution happens most commonly through Evolution, and the Blogosphere is evolving on a daily basis. Don't write their obituary before they've reached the peak!
What about a revolution in revolution making...
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
I think the future of journalism is Wikinews More info
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
"Blog? What the Hell is a blog; but a clincally depressed woman who I am not going to sleep with telling me about her day! Blog is the sound men make when they are performing oral on each other."
This
To me blogs are like the old time soap box in the park. Any yahoo can "take his turn" and everyone knows that what is said is one person's opinion. It is a valid and perhaps important method of communication but it lacks impartiality and fact-checking. It isn't hard hitting journalisim backed up with facts and the reputation of a corporation.
I'm not discounting blogs - they are an important part of my day. I just know that if I read something on 'em, I have to do my own checking.
Still, I think they fall short of being journalisim. Hell, people even sometimes read what I write! Me, mister nobody. And people read me.
Until bloggers start finding/reporting the stories instead of just spreading and spinning them, the answer is no.
vk.
Yeah, and it used to be the case that to make a purchase you had to leave your house. Yawn. I'm bored of people who say that it's only revolution if people bleed, it's only activism if you spend a night in jail, it's only significant if it's significant in the particular way prescribed by the self-appointed arbiter of meaningfulness. What if there's a revolution in revolutions? What if suddenly people are free to assign their OWN notions of worth to their actions and the consequences thereof? "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, "... Cox's attempt to pose as an authority sounds like the laughter/derision of stage two, just before "then they fight you".
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
The media was the watchdog of the government. It's sad that it seems that the watchdog now needs watching.
The mainstream media doesn't do reporting anymore. The blogosphere allows for a lot of crap, but through that crap comes a lot of valuable research. How many Iraqis are allowed to give their opinions on the nightly newscasts? Yet I can chose any number of Iraqi blogs and get a point of view that I would never see on the evening newscast - and because of it I've learned things about Iraqi culture and the situation there that the media would never have time to delve into.
Blogs are biased commentaries, they do have their place and always will but they cannot completely replace traditional journalism. To make a comment you have to have something to comment on. It might be nice to think you can write an insightful article about anything in the world sitting behind a computer but that is not correct. Journalists don't just write what they think, they investigate, meet people and travel to visit their subject. All of this gives a greater insight than any blogger can manage.
If anything, they do provide some sort of equilibrium that's been lacking in the top-down, spoon fed to the masses nature of most traditional media sources.
In the old days, when the newspaper was wrong or simply not paying attention, you could send a pithy letter to the editor and hoped it gets published, depending on his humility and the risk he wants to take of losing a few kneejerk ignorant subscribers. In other words, fat chance.
Now, when the media's wrong, you have your own public forum to soundoff in any way you please--be it the one sentence the editor might publish, or the ten-page diatribe that would never go anywhere on its own. Likely, there will be others that think the same way you do. And when a simple Google search by the interested public, a government official, or that newspaper editor can connect those opinions by a simple query and actually look deeper into the story, we thus have the option for real media accountability. And that is the real power of blogging.
--sean
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Wikinews is the future of journalism.
If we went back a few years, the blogging equivalent would be scrapbooking (which is also very big in certain areas). People are sharing their experiences, opinions, interesting events, reflections, etc. However, scrapbooking is still just a hobby.
Although the strict definition of journalism does apply to blogs (" The periodical collection and publication of current news; the business of managing, editing, or writing for, journals or newspapers; as, political journalism." according to dictionary.com), I think we'd all aggree that pure journalism should be unbiased and report purely on the events. Even though the mainstream media is biased to some degree, they still have to answer for misinformation, bad sources, etc. Blogs are even more biased, as we all saw during the past Presidential Election, and they have no accountability whatsoever. At best, they'd qualify as op-ed pieces in a news publication.
If bloggers could be held accountable for their stories, and if there was some kind of 'accreditation' for them, I think they could then be recognized as valid news sources and not just the ranting and raving of the few.
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
They can make us focus on only part of a story. Dan Rather is resigning in part due to the controversy surrounding the bogus documents he used in a story sbout Bush's military record. Although most people agree that the documents were forged, hardly anyone says that the underlying story (that Bush did not meet his National Guard responsibilities) was false.
In short, Rather got the story right, but all anyone talks about is the forged documents.
My other sig is extremely clever...
I see no difference in content between a blog and an opinion section of any newspaper. When blogs report "news" they will become "news sites". When "news sites" place their opinions on the web, they become "blog sites".
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
I recently read an article in the New Yorker magazine about an influential blog called "The Note."
They said it was very influential in Washington, DC politics. It is said to be read by the "Gang of 500" political elites.
I suspect the Drudge Report is another influential one. The page rank is an effect of influence and not a cause.
Page ranking can measure who's web site links to a blog. But it doesn't measure who reads it and how influential they are.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
Information wants to be free! Don't slam it down just for GPL'ing content!
:P)
(Please don't mod this anywhere. I just didn't want to post AC because I don't want the parent to think it was the grandparent answering
Bot Assisted Blogging
I heard Ana Marie's testimony live on C-Span radio, and was underwhelmed. She spoke her own personal point of view, which was that bloggers just get on the web and give their opinion on the news. She, her immediate audience, and evidently Slashdot editors, thought she was speaking for all bloggers. She was not speaking for blogs such as mine (underreported.com), thememoryhole.org, libertyforum.org, whatreallyhappened.com, unknownnews.net, propagandamatrix.com, prisonplanet.com, etc., etc. that just try to get at the truth the mass media ignores, hides, or even sometimes buries after the fact.
In terms more peaceful than the Battle, I personally have "left the house" since 2000 thanks to blogs. Disenchanted with Bush and Gore, I discovered the Constitution Party and have gathered ballot access signatures and/or worked the polls ever since (2000, 2002, and 2004). I don't believe I am alone in such active participation, especially if we take the high voter turnout this year as an indicator.
Another way bloggers and those with similar political affiliations have been "leaving the house" is get-togethers through meetup.com. Revolutions start with such meetings.
The lack of a physical presence in the U.S. over the 2004 vote fraud is distressing -- in contrast to Ukraine. ANSWER is planning a U.S. inaugural day permitted protest -- but that's too late. Something (and here I admit I am taking the passive voice) should have been arranged for prior to the electoral college vote. Wonkette may have a small point after all, but it's a cheap shot overall. We're a lot better off and more informed with the blogs, and people are getting more involved, not less.
Afterall, if you were to believe the blogs, W would have gotten his ass kicked in the 2004 election. Whilst they have established a certain level of power, they are still not news, and the masses know it. And this is coming from someone who'se had stories post in blog type sites that have been reprinted internationally.
The great thing about Blogs as journaism is that you get to hear what people on the scene, who are also part of the local culture, think about something happening in thier area 9see other post about Ukrane blogs).
So while many blogs are just commentary on the news, a number of blogs are indeed real news in tha they are giving you reports you would not see otherwise, and often with better context (from which spring forth less error-filled results). And some bloggers do research just as real journalists do to uncover things - witness those that looked into details in the whole Dan Rather thing. How is uncovering something like that any less a case of good investigative journalism than if CNN did it?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is real journalism left; you have to look for the right sources. The signal-to-noise level in blogdom is awful. Journalists are trained to write what they observe; some do and some embellish.
Lots of people blogging are downright boring and have little sense of either how to write, or even how to represent their own field of expertise, if they have one at all. Sure, there are filters, but there's little credentialization, and still more people that think they have to post to just to keep people interested in coming back. Sprinkle in some naughty photos, gossip, innuendo, made up 'facts', statistics, and there you have it: digital prattle at best
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
No.
Next question, please.
By the parents definition, Drudge is a Journalist. not a blogger. He rarely comments, usually he is reporting news that you wouldn't otherwise see.
The question though is do traditional journalists still subscribe to the ethics that they hold so dear? News is now "infotainment". The emphasis is on getting better viewer ratings etc rather than on getting the truth. Journalists are controlled by the corporations, whitehouse, military etc. They have the right to free speach, but they know that if they don't say the right things they won't get cooperation. If you get a bad name in the whitehouse or a corporation, it will take a little longer for your calls to be returned and you get scooped by someone else. Say the wrng things about what's happing in Iraq and your embedded journalist ends up joining the troops going off to wash trucks instead of the troops going into a nice night firefight with beautiful video images to send home.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What an appropriate time to link something related to this. check out this little video about this exact subject. Blogs replacing journalism. Check it out.
That's the nice thing about blogs. You can leave the house and still update your blog. You can update your blog from a mobile phone, a PDA, a networked cafe, a public library, just about anywhere you can think of. You can upload text, speech, images from a digital camera or camera-phone, or even multimedia/video if you have a web host. You can instantly update, correct mistakes, and receive feedback. Blogs are very cool, and can do a lot more than they're given credit for.
The main problem facing blogs is (a) credibility and (b) finding a good blog (or more to the point, blogging community) in a sea of bloggers.
Blogs won't just bring about social change, but they'll also reflect and reinforce societies. They will enable people to find others with common interests that they otherwise would not think are widely shared.
Blogs are good.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
In America's "two-party" system, third parties keep the major parties honest. If they get too far off track, they risk having a third party supplant them. It's happened before and will happen again.
/., are a mix of the two.
Editorial, political, and public-interest blogs, collectively and individually, keep the mainstream journalists on their toes. Today, with millions of Americans reading such blogs, the major media cannot pretend that a certain event didn't happen, or that people don't care about a certain issue.
Technical blogs are another animal, they serve like online 24x7 technical conferences.
Some blogs, like
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
More often than not, pruported journalists aren't providing journalism anyway.
Many 'news' sources are so biased that they broadcast/publish little but opinion anyway.
Blogs are a step up from the sorts of news sources that blindly reproduce AP articles, but cant ever catch up with those who actually keep correspondants all over the world and try to present what's actually going on.
Cause you can get bloggers. You know, I wouldn't mind bidding on Dan Rather.
The more I read or hear from Anna Marie Cox (wonkette), the more I'm beginning to think she's a twit:
Who the hell needs to leave a house to have a revolution? That's the stupidest non-sequiter bit of reasoning I've ever read! Most revolutions start with a letter or a manifesto or a little red book, not gadflying about or whatever it is she means by that rebuttal. An idea, written large, creates a revolution. And blogs are pretty damn good at trafficking in ideas.
Her roots are in journalism, yet she's quick to admit she got fired from several journalism jobs. So, why do we care what she thinks? I'm not sure if I should declare her inexpert or (like many journalists) biased. Either way, thumbs down.
She assuredly is not helping the larger media problem of distracting attention from real, substantive discussions about issues. For her, it's not just gab about process, but also sex talk thrown in. Sex sells, but disingenuously marketing oneself as a political wonk and getting famous by resorting to gossip and sex... that's lame.
Right here she even makes a point of saying she's trying to be like The Daily Show, yet she wanders around in the political weeds unable to provide any depth or insight about much more than gossip or process. Neither matters, and until she changes neither should she.
She refuses to allow comments on her blog. This, by itself, isn't a bad thing, but it seems to be a self-indulgence that is found more with journalists refusing to relenquish control. It's careful packaging (cough cough--marketing!) ahead of rhetoric and intelligent discourse.
In short: she's either ET or People Magazine for blogdom. Fluff, not substance. Or, as I said: she's a twit. If you want to really talk politics, marginalize her and let's move on. She's demonstrably no expert on politics or revolutionary change.
Incidentally, she's not alone in misunderstanding blogs: Pandora's box is open, and sometimes experts of the prior paradigm are too close to see things with perspective. Yes, there'll be a revolution. To think otherwise is akin to thinking 'that HTTP stuff' won't matter much. Blogs already are shaking up the publishing industry, and we're nowhere near full public awareness or full potential.
That's "Ana Marie", one 'n'.
She's way cuter than Drudge.
Recently in sweden a journalist working at Swedish television "SVT" was forbidden to keep "blogging" privately. The reason was based upon the journalists support for John Kerry during the presidential election which was written on the blog-site. SVT however, thought the journalists should keep a neutral focus even "off-duty".
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
Any proof to back that up?
What?
When you buy a newspaper, for example, part of what you pay for is the assumption that the stories are timely, accurate, unbiased, and fact-checked. With blogs, it's up to the reader to be discriminating.
I'm sorry, but that's part of the reason why I don't even get a newspaper anymore.
Hvae you not ever talked to anyone that has a story with something they have been involved in? Just about every time, the newspaper will get facts wrong - sometimes very significant facts. I'm not even talking about bias here, just the plain reality that most newspaper articles seem to have simple mistakes that go unremarked on mostly.
I would say the resposibility has always been on the reader to cast a critical eye on what is being reported. The newspapers offer a dangerous illusion that you can relax in this regard.
The good thing about blogs is that if they get something wrong - they will generally be corrected quickly. In reports coming from Iraq for example some bloggers thought they saw cannisters of Sarin gas in a picture from stockpiles captured, but other people pointed out quickly that the cannisters were in fact vials of serum to protect against Sarin, and they story died - in a matter of hours, with bloggers who reported it initally issuing updates correcting themselves. Compare and contrast to Rathergate (as the blogger world likes to refer to the incident) where Rather would not back off the story for weeks, or to things wrong in a newspaper that might see a small retraction a week later in some part of the paper you'd never read, and certainly not with the story you might have clipped out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Blogs aren't reporting either. They're jouranlism. But what passes for "reporting" ("get the facts") these days is really "journalism" ("spin the interpretation"), and that's the problem.
And because nobody in the MSM fact-checks... How many times have hoax headlines from Fark and The Onion made the 6 o'clock news so far this year? (I can think at least three or four off the top of my head.)
> They aren't about reporting the news, they're about giving equal time to opposing viewpoints, even if one is completely wrong and not worth acknowledgement.
*applause*
Seriously, MSM folks. What's this "input from both sides" stuff? My gut reaction is "fuck that". If you're reporting the discovery of a new dinosaur fossil, there is no second side that says that we need to be wary of such discoveries because the Earth is only 6,000 years old. (If I want pseudoscience, I'll watch the Religion Channel's newscast.)
How the fuck many people died because some fuckwitted "journalist" decided he needed to "tell both sides" of a story about therapeutic touch as a cure for cancer? (If I want that, I'll watch the Discovery Channel these days. *sigh* :)
If you're reporting about phishing scams, or the reason Little Johnny has 100 "H0t P3n15 5lu+ 4x+iun" mails in his email box every day, there is no "both sides" of "ethikul small bidnidmen" working out of "home offices". The fact is that Little Johnny is getting buried in crap. (I can't get media coverage, because marketeers own (and pwn) the broadcast networks.)
And finally, if you're reporting that some Postscript printed from a Microsoft Word file was having been typed in 1970, there is no second side to the story. I don't give a flying fark whose signature you claim is on it, and I really don't give a fark about how many self-styled "andwriting experts" you can pay to claim that the signature resembles an original specimen -- because the memo itself is bogus, immediately rendering any possibility of an "other side" irrelevant. (And I need blogs here, because Emperor Dan Has No Clothes (if he had side pockets, he'd be a frog, or something), and nobody else in the MSM was willing to say it loud enough to make people listen.)
When I go to freerepublic.com, I know I'm gonna get the Republican spin. When I go to democraticunderground.com, I know I'm gonna get the Democratic spin. When one side is full of posters saying "Don't worry, this is a conspiracy, it'll all blow over", and the other side is saying "Hey, look at this neat fact that supports that guy's observation", I know which side is more likely to be correct in any given scenario.
Reading blogs makes interpreting the news an active process, not a passive one -- which is bad for the MSM business, (and probably unhealthy to me over the long term as we require more conformity out of our citizens), but it's so much fun I can't seem to stop :)
The fact that it's fun, more than anything else, is why I gave up on the MSM as anything other than a source of cheap laughs. (Oh, Dan, Dan, Dan... how I'm gonna miss you on election night 2008. You were responsible for at least twelve shots of bourbon during your coverage of '04, by far and away the most drinks-per-hour guy on the tube!)
From the article:
ALSO: I happened to catch the O'reilly factor the other night and good ol' bill was predicting how Fox news would be the number one news source in 3 years. At which point we will all be fed our news by morons, slack jawed yokels, or inbreds(or any combination of the three). Not that its much different with CBS, NBC, ABC except on those stations the primary mode of talking is not screaming to drive a flimsy point home...
Switchs station to fox news... urge to kill RISING
I remember hearing about Dan Rather, but I have no idea what you are referring to regarding Trent Lott. What happened? What did he do? What did bloggers? Do? Why and When did he step down? I think it is kind of funny that in a story on journalism absolutely no background or context is given.
The "Mr. X" episode of the Simspons ran here yesterday. When Homer ran out of news, he had to resort to making it up. Slashdot of course, just reposts old news.
English is easier said than done.
"'A revolution requires that people leave their house.'"
Um, yeah. Under some misguided, narrow version of revolution that denies alternate meanings.
Not that I'm pro-"blog". Unless you count Slashdot or web forums as a web log, I really don't read them. This is, IMO, just another means of communication, like email, SMS, IM, forums and such.
So... the world of blogs is kind of like a giant beowulf cluster of /.'s?
Blogging is a fad and journalists are lazy. Most blogs are nothing more than someone scribbling on the urinal wall of the Internet. The more trustworthy ones are nothing more than people who add a couple of one liners to a news story gathered elsewhere. The blogosphere is filled with kranks and petty megalomaniacs who are only given life by the laziest of professions: journalists.
Why do I call them lazy? Well, I was a journalist and worked the sports desk of a major college town newspaper (Top 10 NCAA spors program every year and the one of best women's BBall school of all time -- you figure it out). I thought the culture of laying around doing nothing until deadline was nigh was peculiar to that newspaper (on all desks) until I got a job at a TV station as a factchecker/script writer on the metro beat. Basically, I would write the little blurbs the talking heads would say. Harder than it seems! Well, the reporters there were equally lazy and often just made shit up on the spot. I was fired for having trouble with "truth."
My point is that if the fad of blogging disappeared, then journalists (read lazy scum) would cut to some other way of increasing their dicking off time. Example: before blogs there was 'trolling the wire.' Basically, you would read wire reports coming out of other metro areas, then take a story that was fairly interesting, add a local angle, change it enough that it was yours and BOOM 8 inches of copy.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
and so are gossiping bitches in hair salons.
If you are wondering why people are turning out in droves in Ukrane and not here, perhaps it's because you see the results of people expereiencing REAL (nad abvious) election fraud, and not just electorial mistakes made here and there on an insignificant portion of ballots.
Were all the newstattions promoting Bush 24 hours a day before the election and ridiculing Kerry? Hardy. Were guys with truncheons coming into polling booths to beat the crap out of everyone there for voting Kerry? Hardly. Were internationl observers calling our election a sham? Don't think so!! Even Kerry was OK with the results and is not calling for further investigation.
Read up on what went down in Ukrane to see what REAL election theft looks like.
'No,' says Anna Marie Cox, author of Wonkette, 'A revolution requires that people leave their house.'
Yeah. Like during the computer revolution.
The fourth estate is traditional journalism.
There is in fact a show on CBC in Canada called "The Fifth Estate". I guess the bloggers will have to be demoted to the Sixth Estate.
Utter rubbish, wheres the grounds on this statement?
Just because I am always indoors does not mean I can't start a revolution.
Movement does not require a change in spatial relations. If it did, then I guess Gramsci couldn't have be a revolutionary in prison. That's the answer: Lock up all the people who are participating or might participate in a revolution then there won't be any!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Do as I do, pronounce blogs as "bollocks" (or bollogs) instead of blogs. It reminds me of what most of them are. Sure most journalism is crap too, but what makes you think that random unobjective opinions will replace journalism? You think that most journalists are going to publish their findings on the web without getting paid for their work? Or do you think that most bloggers will start doing research before writing their next entry?
:-)
Wikki's...now there is some promise.
No I didn't RTFA, I read slashdot!
Most likely blogs will be the future of generating grass roots media spin. They'd be a great way of getting a nice grass roots campaigns going, so I imagine that PR and propagandists will adopt them more so. Journalism is mainly a branch of marketing and PR nowadays of course. A lovely place for anonymous disinformation, propaganda and smear campaigns etc. It'll probably save governments the trouble of having to put their names to propaganda, so perhaps they'll enjoy the anonymity.
For the most part however, they'll likely remain the narcisist and egomaniac paradise. Oh, and the last bastion for the various tin hat brigades - born again Christians, UFOlogists, etc.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
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.
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
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45 romenesko's media news site is a fairly influential blog sponsored by the even more influential poynter institute.
Actually, he rarely reports anything other than potential talking points people are trialing to see if they'll take, random rumor and innuendo, and the like. He's a muppet, and you'd hear it from someone else if you didn't hear it from him.
I forget what 8 was for.
Blogs are the future of op-ed.
John Stewart is the future of journalism.
These guys are the future of comedy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Wait...you read the articles?
You're not from around here, are you.
Please help metamoderate.
If journalism is going to become an opinion-fest, then the world is quickly coming to an end!
OK maybe a wee bit unrelated, but how did this annoying term come into common use for an online journal? I swear to god if I heard someone say the word Blog irl I'd either want to laugh or smack them. WTH kind of word is blog? It sounds like something a 2 year old would come up with.
Blogs may replace much of what we see as journalism in three significant ways.
1. The Chronicle Blog - Some respondants have created a false dichotomy between journalism and blogs asserting that journalists gather news while bloggers comment on the news. However, many journalists are taking advantage of the blog format to journal observations, developing stories and travelogs.
2. The Updatable Story - Print and broadcast media have a difficult time updating stories. Even on the web, new developments are managed by re-writing existing articles with updated information. The blog provides a much better vehicle for adding incremental updates to existing stories.
3. Full Service Journalism - Traditional journalism is based on a single story model. You read what one author has to deliver, and that's it. Blogs allow journalists to collect and disseminate a variety of resources related to a particular story. Articles from other writers, web-sites, commentary, facts and figures, and press releases all contribute to user friendly journalism.
The convience of blogs for both writers and readers will inevitably drive this format into more and more arenas of authorship.
... afterall I read it on slasdot =)
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
"A revolution requires that people leave their house."
/. introductions. Then look at the results. Bad comments follow. Bloggers are not drilled on clarity. Consequently, it is uncommon.
I am certain that these people possess houses, not just one house.
This mistake is trivial, but it points to a larger problem of the blogosphere. The emphasis on direct, clear communication is lacking, and good editors are few. Witness
I am not quite sure if you are supporting blogs or traditional media!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Have you read that crap on her blog? It is almost ALL polical horserace crap, political gossip, a real distraction from the real political issues that need discussion. Who said this, who said that, attacks on the GOP and Bush. Hardly ever a word about the real and important issues of taxation, trade, healthcare, etc.
No doubt that the author of this slashdot article quoted wonkette because wonkette is often cited by mainstream media sources when they discuss blogs.
And why do these mainstream media sources cite wonkette? Because she restrains her political discussions to the conventional topics covered by the mainstream media and she takes the same slants offered by the mainstream media. She is "safe."
Clue: avoid any blogs referenced by the mainstream media. They are sanitized crap--by definition.
Same thing goes for politicians and political candidates--if the mainstream media gives them much attention, then do not vote for them--it means that politician has sold out and is ideologically acceptable to the powerful interests that control the media.
For example, consider the case of the new media darling, Barack Obama: there is a good reason why he is suddenly a media darling--he has promised he will not support "protectionist" trade (translation: he is a willing accomplice to the bleeding dry of America).
eat shiat and bark at the moon
All opinion, often wrapped in the illusion of fact. Neither blogs nor talk radio are journalistic endeavors.
For the most part, I agree. Weblogs do, at least, usually have a place for comments, though, so there's often space for people to criticise the content. It gets ambiguous if the owner starts censoring comments, and also if there's a very biased or unqualified audience. For this reason, I don't think many weblogs are very reliable.
But a lot of professional journalistic media isn't very different. Much television media, for instance, is very trashy. Even scarier is the fact that trashy media often does its best to present itself as respectable, and people fall for it. It frequently has an agenda that conflicts with providing reliable information, and most importantly it doesn't normally provide channels for criticism.
Respectable print media, at least, does allow for reader criticism and feedback. The two or three newspapers that I have some respect for do publish letters quite openly, including the ones that are critical of the paper's journalism. The letters are moderated to an extent, but my experience has been that they tend to publish anything within the stated rules, or at least acknowledge that they haven't published a letter and explain why.
The letters to the editor is a section that I almost always look at. This isn't because I have a lot of respect for random people's ideas, but because it's a good indication of when the paper's information is in dispute.
Weblogs aren't too far off print media. Although they usually don't have the journalistic staff, they still have ample space and design for immediately available feedback and criticism. Given the right conditions and if it's done well, a weblog could still be a good and reliable source of information. I don't know if any really exist at the moment, though. Slashdot certainly isn't one.
This feels like the Wiki topic debate in many ways. Except with one big difference no set group "moderation" option. While info can be repeated over and comments added by other blogs there isn't a central location which sumerizes all the views.
;) You too can own your own blogger: A Blogger Put himself on Auctions at e-bay
During the elections one station had a "blog point of view" (I forget who) which they were trying to use as feedback for trying to see what issues people were talking about most and what general opions were. So as a census type review of the public eye they seemed to think it had some merrit at least. Maybe this is a place to start? Blog Stats
Examples blogs you might consider news:
"E-LawLibrary Weblog provides professional analysis and commentary on current news items regarding research, the information profession, libraries, the legal profession, and law school."
E-LawLibrary Weblog
Blogging for PR?
If your now convinced...
No. Just like articles appearing in scientific journals are more trustworthy source of reference than webpages. Peer reviews, etc etc..
The problem with blogs is that everybody has one. Sure, there may be some that may have great commentaries or information, some that are generally amusing, etc., but finding them is like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
Your brain is not a computer.
If a blog posts in the forest does anybody care?
there's a lot of pages on the internet.
blogging software's just a convenient way to manage a series of web-pages over time.
now, no-one's paying attention to what little Thaliyah-Britnney's blogging in her livejournal about Beyonce from Bumfluff Nebraska.
Blogs that are being read have built up credibility and trust over time.
They've got as much to lose as say Jayson Blair over at the New York Times.
But good blogs are few and far between.
Some friends and I run a slashlike site covering local news and events in our City of Canberra.
We recently had an interesting story involving the police and local politics.
It was interesting enough to get the local TV, radio, and print media running the story.
Did the local blogs want to touch it? (even though there were some serious issues about the dangers of hosting anonymous comment in our town)
Nope.
All too busy re-hashing whatever orthodoxy they'd already come to the party with.
The point I'm trying to make is that crap blogs don't matter. No-one reads them anyway.
Just like in the early days of the printing press there were pamphleteeers putting out all sorts of crap. People only read what they've come to trust.
It's a lot like open source software. There's a lot of crap but that's not to say some of it won't be as good or better than the proprietary alternatives.
What's good is that the barrier to entry has been lowered so people who do have something to say can now be heard.
Just take it with a grain of salt untilt he author has established your trust.
The New York Times wasn't the journal of record on its first day of publication either.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
journalism also forms the basic archive for history. the rest is finding details in contemporary documents.
unless you can show me the CD reader they will be buying in 4500 AD, I want to keep some stuff on good old paper.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"While out on the campaign trail covering candidates, my own network's political unit would not even give me exit poll information on election days because it was thought to be too tricky for a common reporter to comprehend. If you are standing in the main election night studio when your network's polling experts start discussing the significance of a particular state poll, you the reporter will hear about three words out of one hundred that you will understand. These polls occur in the realm of statistics and probability. They require PhD-style expertise to understand. The people who analyze them for news organizations, like the legendary Warren Mitofsky and Martin Plissner at CBS News -- have trade associations like doctors do to certify their work.
"When you the humble reporter are writing a story based on the polls you need one of these gurus standing over your shoulder interpreting what they mean or you almost certainly will screw it up. There is a word for this kind of teamwork and expertise. It's called 'journalism'."
The writer concludes:
"...the chances of the bloggers replacing mainstream journalism are about as good as the parasite replacing the dog it fastens on."
Of course, this is a retired journalist writing this. While I have nothing but respect for career journalists, it makes sense that they would be the first to lash out against bloggers. Plus, let's face it, older generations often look down on new forms of media... just look at resistance to hiphop music and the SMS-style of writing for further examples.
After this election, it is pretty clear that there is no single source that people will rely on as credible. Republicans think the mainstream media is biased, and Democrats think cable is biased against them. What the blogs do is force the mainstream media and the cable outlets to be sure that what they are purporting in their stories is actually real. Do you think CBS is going to run a pre-election day special on documents or missing weapons before they are ABSOLUTELY convinced that the evidence supports their premise? I think that this election cycle was in fact a big win for the Internet, and bloggers in particular. Howard Dean raised a ton of money and grass roots support via the net, swift boat vets got alot of their message out via their web page, CBS was shamed two times in a row(Rathergate/Missing weapons). Do I think this will replace traditional news outlets? I don't think the mainstream will be put out of business any more than television replaced all newspapers. However, I do see a future where the common civilian or military person can become politically active from his office. Contributions, organization of political events, message spread, analysis, and polling is all so easy to work when you make it so one doesen't have to jump through hoops to get there.
Anna Marie Cox's opinion is probably worth what you paid for it. On the otherhand, I agree with Drezner. Comparing bloggers with journalists is unfair because most bloggers do not do original journalism and nor do many of them wish to. They do serve, however, as a fact checking body and oversight committee on mainstream journalism. In the past two years they have been responsible for a number of high profile corrections by newspapers and news outlets and they should be congratulated for it.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
You certainly don't need to leave your house to spend money...
...
Which is where "rent-an-activist.com" comes into play. For $50 USD you can rent an activist to protest in front of any building with a sign of your choosing. Just upload a pdf of your sign and it will be printed to specification.
Pictures of your activist in action will be provided... +$50 for random insults. +$100 for spray paint.
2. $$$
3. Profit
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
The future of journalism never was and never will be blogs. Blogs are often totally biased and opinionated, but unlike trained journalists, bloggers have no reason to stick to a strict code of ethics and objective "reporting". Sure, Blogs might be a great way to keep in touch, and even a great way to make a stand about something you believe in... but not the future of serious journalism. However, with RSS feeds and such, having an RSS "blog" of news stories may very well become more prevalent.
Not that I don't love blog-based news systems (<3 Slashdot).
- dshaw
You obviously don't understand the American voting system. The entire purpose of electronic voting machines is to eliminate the need for "obvious" vote fraud like physical violence.
You say an "insignificant portion" of ballots were affected. Of course you can't actually say this - there is no provision for verifying the totals are correct!
I just love our new American republic. Just push a button and trust your national Republican/Diebold/corporate axis to do all the vote tabulation and counting. Also make sure the corporate media ensures there are plenty of tools like yourself who defend it!
So will the new media revolution be blogged? 'No,' says Anna Marie Cox, author of Wonkette, 'A revolution requires that people leave their house.'"
So does ordering music & movies, taking college courses, talking to people who aren't in your house, viewing the person you're talking to, stealing money, spying, working, researching... oh wait.
I think Ms. Cox has missed the train completely. A revolution may have required that people leave their houses in the past. The fact that that has changed is the revolution.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Bronx cheer that is. I cought her on CSPAN two days ago...she is SO much more modest and mild mannered speaking to an audiance than you would be led to expect from reading her blog. but if we have to endure the serrated tongue of Ms. Coulter, fairness requires a wallow in the words of Ms Cox.
with examples such as those two, blogging clearly as hell is not categorically news [and Ms Cox CSPAN presentation to a journalist audiance stated that message quite bluntly]
Bloging IS the news more than it is a report of news just a goofy, interesting kind of news to be taken with a grainery of salt. caveat emptor!
BTW the Sept 26 NYtimes magazine did a long piece on the blogging spawned by the Republican Convention. The content is now only available by purchase on line so check it out at your library. The story gives an interesting perspective on blogging and quite a few interesting facts [e.g. there are over 2000000 people with their own blogs...get busy reading!]
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Journalists are accountable to the general public through their credibility. Random bloggers saying something means nothing because they have no credibility. Thus, they have essentially zero accountability.
I don't see much difference. "Random bloggers" don't get much traffic. The bloggers who have an impact are precisely those who have established credibility with a sizable fraction of the general public. If they lose that credibility, they lose traffic. The most popular blogs support themselves based on advertising, which they get as a reflection of their traffic.
What is upsetting to traditional journalists is that the old adage, "Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one" has broken down. With the internet, the cost of publication has become negligible. Bloggers stand or fall not on their ability to meet a newspaper or broadcaster's political or economic agenda, but solely on their ability to attract an audience.
If you think about it, the new testiment of the christian bible reads like several blogs of the same events all over again. Perhaps if the rapture and all that crap from revelations comes true, blogs would make a good accounting of events.
:-P
I can't wait to read the book of CmdrTaco.
Blogs aren't journalism. They aren't about reporting the news, they're about commenting on it. I realize that a lot of people these days have real trouble understanding the difference between news and commentary, but there is a fairly significant divide between the two.
However, many blogs do report news, and provide references to primary sources. True, most of the factual material about current events comes from the news wires. But that is also true of most stories on print or broadcast medial This makes it possible for the reader to actually check the validity of the blogger's characterization. The ability of a blog entry to serve as an instant entry point for independent research is what makes the blogs qualitatively different from the traditional media. With the forged memo stories, the "old" media were making vague references to opinions of experts. The blogs provided the documents themselves and links to the detailed arguments and analyses of the supposed experts. As a result, the conclusion was evident while the old media was still equivocating.
As one of those who do the mangling, I know that what a reporter wrote sometimes bears little resemblance to what gets printed.
And speaking of reporters going out, sometimes the going out part goes no further than the fax machine or mail server. Or haven't you heard of the term press release? I often see reports that are simply lightly rewritten press releases. And guess what the reporter's contribution often is? The editorializing.
A well-hit blogger is probably just as reliable or unreliable, as fair or biased, as a popular newspaper.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
No.
-makoffee
Yes. Already happened. Get over it.
Rules? We have no rules. We're trying to accomplish something. - Thomas Edsion
No,' says Anna Marie Cox, author of Wonkette, 'A revolution requires that people leave their house.'"
When you get on the internet - you do leave your house.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
Be interesting to know if she is or not.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
I don't think that was what she meant. Perhaps sweat would be a more appropriate necessity - instead of staying in front of the computer screen and scanning the internet for information before rehashing it and adding your own opinion, you have to work to find facts that aren't necessarily already posted on the web. Go places, make phone calls, interview people, videotape events, etc. With so few news sources available to bloggers, other than the mainstream media that is generally dismissed as being unreliable, biased and selective by those same bloggers, how can a reporting revolution come about?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I'm surrounded by people with average attitudes who never seem to leave their houses (especially with WoW out). Yet the will of the herd still manages to set our course.
The real question is: can blogs can change/define the conventional wisdom? I say eventually, yes.
Will it translate into a diversity of opinion? Will it translate into a more reality and fact-based opinions? Those questions are more concerned with human nature, not technology or information.
Humans have had the correct info for years (cigarettes, war, imperialism- all bad) and still have chose to do nothing about it.
"A revolution requires that people leave their house."
A revolution also requires people who know how to form sentences featuring number agreement.
-Carl
http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?s tory_id=3428729
From what I've seen, the topics discussed in Blogs aren't results of investigative journalism, they are in most cases (excluding the "what I ate for breakfast blogs") discussing events seen in the news.
A clear example of this is the genocide in Darfur and that it was an almost complete silence within the Blog-community, and this was connected to the silence in the mainstream media. As soon as the mainstream media started to air stories about Darfur, the Blogs caught up and got active in this topic.
Is this bad? Well, it's not "bad" per say, it's just a hint about Blogs not being the future of journalism, what it is is a brilliant way to spread and take part of information.
Er.. No.
From what I've seen they seem to be mostly the preserve of ignorant air heads spouting a load of old crap on subjects about which they know nothing.
Oh, wait a minute... This is exactly the sort of thing produced by the Sun and The Daily Mail etc.
So maybe they are after all ?
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
You became a "source" to a news-site, you are still a blog until your over-arching purpose is to report the news. At which point, you are now a news-site (maybe not an affiliated news-site). Does a newspaper become toilet paper because you line the bottom of your bird-cage? No. It's purpose is to provide news stories so it is still a newspaper. Now, whether you believe it to be "news" or garbage is a matter of opinion.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Bloggers link to original sources more than MSM. Count the links or direct quotes in a good blog, then compare them to any MSM news site. Shit, online news should be cross-indexed until it looks like a religion-student's bible (more red-lined/annotated words than not). They're not. Why? Because they wrongly believe that it's bad marketing to guide a user away from their site. Eyeballs, not truth, are their goal. They haven't figured out that their audience will use them *more* if their stories have that depth.
I read online news. But I also dig around on blogs, drilling down until I hit non-parallel (not necessarily contradictory, just *differently biased*) original content like an embed journalist in iraq, an aid-worker in Afghanistan, or some kid telephoning updates into the BBC.
Years ago, CSM had a 'world monitor' magazine that published stuff by non-US sources. Yeah, they each had their own biases, but the biases are *different* than what I get here. A swedish journalist's take on the mideast is *interesting*, as is an Arab's, a US soldier's, and an expat iraqi living in Canada. Looking for that balanced perspective has let me read:
A US general saying 'I am not aware of ANY civilian casualties', numerous Iraqi blogs that talk about stuff like 'I'm getting to where I can sleep through the smaller mortar blasts', 'I tried to leave town, but didn't get far; it's just too dangerous out there', 'The smell of dead bodies is getting awful', or 'What kind of attack leaves someone bleeding from the eyes?'.
(the answer to that last one may be concussion grenades, incidentally-- a less-lethal combat measure that, while superficially grim, is actually evidence that the US really is *trying* to minimize casualties)
Based on these findings, perhaps you'll agree: I'm not trying for an echo chamber. I'm trying to critically review (aka, question) the dominant story. Yeah, you can get an echo chamber effect. But you can also seek out contradictions and distrust MSM's own echo-chamber.
Anyone that defines blogs with a 'just' doesn't get 'em: DailyKos is not a stream of consciousness (it sees several *articles*, complete with fact-checks and references, daily). Slashdot isn't either (but it is closer). Blogs have a versatility that lets them be more or less.
If you think in terms of mathematical topology, a newspaper 'maps' onto a blog nicely, including the fact-checking effort (i.e., there's nothing to *stop* a blogger from fact-checking). But a blog won't 'map' to a newspaper, often. Blogs can also be: a vanity publication, a book-in-progress, groupthink, a torrent-of-multiple-opinions. They also can be a structure for community, a forum for opinion, for satire, or criticism or deconstruction of someone else's bias (PandasThumb, for example), a SIG or BOF gone virtual, or voyeurism.
Point is, that depth and flexibility, together with trackbacks and meta-blog toolkits and deep-linking that allows the readers to fact-check for themselves, is what will cause blogs to supercede methods used by MSM.
I mentioned pandasthumb: it's one I stumbled across recently. Like the jewish anti-defamation league, it's purpose seems to be a clearinghouse of articles that rebut objectionable material. But the name reminds me of why I think blogs are *revolutionary*: They're like newspapers, but with opposable thumbs. The advancements they offer *can* be integrated into newspapers and MSM. That'll be the future. And that is the revolution.
Oh, and AMC is still a twit, who repeatedly evidences she's unworthy of attention when seriously discussing these things. It's not that she doesn't serve a purpose, it's just that hers is that of being a one-voice People Magazine of political blogdom.
This is where Google really shines.
IT'S UP TO YOU! If you see something that looks like obvious propaganda, press the "related" button... CORROBORATE! If you're not doing this anyways, then you definately aren't getting the full picture. Any History student will tell you likewise.
Frankly, I dislike the mainstream media in general. But at least this way I can filter through the stories that interest me and figure out what's fluff and what's the facts.
Karma: Non-Heinous