Blogging

John W. Jordan's article "Disciplining the Virtual Home Front” got our class having a pretty open discussion about mainstream news versus alternative news. Being a part of the journalism school made me think about this subject more and about how prevalent blogging is in today’s society. Blogging is everywhere. Not only do news papers have their own bloggers that were hired to do a particular job, but there are also bloggers that started up on their own and are now known all over the country for the material they write about.

I think that blogging is a very important way of obtaining news. I am not entirely sure if I believe that every blogger is credible, however, but I do think that some of the bloggers (especially soldiers) who are writing from personal experience have a lot to share with the rest of the world. This is the type of news that we want to hear: the real thing. Most of us realize that not all news sources can be trusted entirely because of the “spin” that can be placed in stories in order to create a new and exciting angle. Hands-on bloggers writing about their personal experience is a more in-your-face news source that gives the public a brutal truth to what is going on in a particular situation.

I do think that bloggers are threatening mainstream news because of the fact that many of these bloggers are doing this work for free because of the enjoyment they receive from it. What’s left are those people searching for a journalist job that are not able to obtain one because of all of the “free work” that bloggers are doing. In the end though, I think that technology is trumping print news anyway, so it is only a matter of time before newspapers will no longer be available.