In the last week, I’ve seen no less than 5 news stories that contend how blogs are growing in appeal and influence in comparison to other such staid formats as the newspaper, TV and radio.
The articles all highlighted the Rather/CBS News mess to show how blogs are changing the way in which people receive and interpret news.
The discussion topic I pose to you is whether y’all be feelin’ that the blogosphere provides value to you as a news source.
My opinion is that there is ZERO value receiving news from a personal blog. Journalism is a media business that relies on professionalism and integrity to bring together readers (viewers) and advertisers. Without an unbiased, professional staff working on collecting, editing and publishing the media, I don’t find sustained value and credibility in the news source. Reporters, editors and fact-checkers go to school for this sort of thing. Yokels throwing up an internet site are, to me, agenda mongols.
I was hanging out recently with an newspaper editor friend who mentioned that his biggest problem is getting younger kids to read the paper. Newspapers are worried about circulation drop with the new generation of internet kids who live online. So, the blog concept represents a challenge to media mainstays worried about losing circulation in the next 10 to 20 years.
What do you all think?
(For the sake of focus, I don’t want to get into the subject of ‘media bias’, even though it’s obvious that The Washington Post and New York Times are the most fair and balanced pubs out there while Fox News is nothing more than psycho, hacks-for-hire whiners bankrolled by Murdoch and his lunacy empire. That is all.)
Value of blogs for news
I look at the technical reality of weblogs.
They are the same things as “web sites” of yesteryear. Really, they’re just a rolling journal with the latest update at the top. Most, including this one, are pretty much useless as primary sources of information.
However, there are some amateur blogs — and some professional ones — which actually feature real journalists doing real journalism. Those have some value.
Overall, blog value for “original source” material statistically approaches zero. It’s an exception, not a rule, when the “blogosphere” actually comes up with real news.
However, I think the easy accessibility of putting up a web page via a “blog”, with practically zero technical know-how, and lots of free areas to do it, is having a dramatic impact in:
As primary sources of news, I don’t know that blogs will ever overtake paid, professional media outlets. But the value of a blog comes from the community which surrounds it and highlights news of common interest to that community. In the case of this little site, the value to me is that it allows me to archive technical stuff of use to me, and keep up-to-date with old friends and new.
I think they are revolutionizing the way people communicate, the way the telephone did the same thing a century ago. But it’s not revolutionizing news. However, I think the news media is going to have to adapt in order to promote more value in their news, and the current institution of reprinting flatulent Associated Press articles will no longer merit my $8.00 a month.
Oh, wait, it already doesn’t. We let our last news subscription expire a year ago, and haven’t missed it. The radio and my daily weblog reading provide more than enough pointers to news that I don’t have time to read…
My thoughts. Worth what you paid for them.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
–I wouldn’t know. Unless yo
–I wouldn’t know. Unless you guy’s post a news article that is the only time that I get the news from a blog entry. I think people find what they like and if they were likely to read the paper for the news then they would be just as likely to go to a journalistic blog site. It is easier to sit at your desk and read a blog than the paper. If they are reading personal blog entries to find value news than they probably weren’t getting the paper for anything more than the comics anyway. Teresa the Flautist and fire dancer
Hangin’ on tha corner
I see blogs as the internet’s water cooler/corner of the block. It’s where we all hang out and discuss whatever. As anyone who has participated in one of these types of discussions knows, the value lies in how well you can determine who speaks truth versus who exaggerates, what’s fact versus what’s scuttlebutt, etc, etc.
Everyone wants to be part of something. With newspapers, your only way of being in a discussion is to write back to the editorial section. With blogging, you can always be part of the discussion. Unless you’re a news junkie, how much news do you get from a media source versus hearing from friends/co-workers/etc? Of course, you’ve always went back to the media source for validation, but the point is that your water cooler/corner of the block now extends to Bejing thanks to blogs and the internet.
There always needs to be a “trusted” source of information, but no longer do we look to newspapers/TV to give it to us first.
My $.02 Weed
Media Bias (oops I said it!)
Sorry to disappoint you, dude, but it’s impossible to discuss this topic without getting into media bias. I promise I’ll be quick.
The biggest problem with the news blogs is that they have absolutely no responsibility to be impartial. With very few exceptions (FactCheck, for example), there are “liberal” blogs and “conservative” blogs. I read liberal blogs like DailyKos and Talking Points Memo. I personally trust them, because they agree with me. But I recognize that they have a liberal bias, which makes them ineffectual as a means to spread news to the other side. A conservative is as unlikely to put their faith in an article from DailyKos as I am to put faith in a story on Fox News.
But the problem is that the “mainstream” media cannot be trusted to be impartial either. In the case of newspapers, there are biases which are either real (Washington Times, for instance) or imagined (New York Times). There are no more journalists who are trusted by everyone – no more Walter Cronkites or Edward Murrows. In today’s increasingly polarized society, we have split in two, and each half has their own media whose job is to tell them what they already know.
I don’t know that there’s a solution.
— Ben
Add To The Discussion
Add to the discussion this recent ruling, by a California judge, that discredits bloggers as journalists.
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/blog05_article1.html
This sort of supports my feeling that blog journalists aren’t professionals and shouldn’t be considered members of the press.
Matt, sorry for forgetting how to apply the hyperlink tag.
EDIT by matthew: No worries, mate. Linked.
I didn’t know…
I didn’t know Blogs were being used as a news source by anyone.
Who gets their news from a blog?
Oh yeah.. I guess as far as this story goes.. me.
Slashdot
For about the last seven years, I’ve been getting my daily tech news from slashdot. Although it’s not an “original source” of news, and not a “blog” in the strictest sense (stories are submitted by the community, and editors choose to promote them to the front page or not), it pointed me to pretty much all the news I could stand to read.
CNN’s idea of “tech news” is, frankly, sucktastic. Whereas if I can find a blogging community which shares some common technical interest with me, there’ll be enough of us looking at the original articles to be able to point out the “good ones”.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Who’s writing the history books?
Matt and I have actually discussed this a bit amongst ourselves. My personal thoughts on the blog vs. media is perspective. Like Ben mentioned, he reads the liberal blogs. If I’m researching a topic, I don’t have to read just what jo blo wants me to think happened. I can continue my research through blogs and other online sources to get many different perspectives. Occasionally we discuss local politics here on our blog, though not regular news, but I think the fact that bloggers discuss their opinions will keep history from being written from one persons perspective.
So save a tree, get your news online! Less clutter for me to deal with!–
Christy