A New Media - Blogging News Stories as They Happen
By Donovan Baldwin
A new breed of journalists, are blogging news stories as they unfold.
This is one of the most exciting and controversial applications of technology that bloggers have discovered and oneof interest, and perhaps concern, to the global community at large.
One thing that makes the blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to update a blog instantaneously, so, often the news on some blogs may tend to be more current than the news in the paper, or on television. Unlike news delivered by the huge systems of these other media, news that appears on blogs does not have to travel through a series of editors and administrators before it reaches the public eye.
This can create some advantages, and some distinct disadvantages.
Perhaps one of the most notable cases recently of news hitting a blog before appearing in other media occured in July 2005 when terrorism struck London.
As passengers were evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one man took several photographs of the scene with his cellular phone. Within an hour these images were posted online. First-person accounts of the catastrophe began appearing on blogs soon after these photos appeared, and people all over the world learned about the events in London by reading the words and seeing the photos posted by bloggers.
This is a bit similar to the events when terrorists seized competitors at the Munich olympics in 1972. I, recently returned from Bavaria, listened intently to shortwave broadcasts coming from the event itself, rather than waiting to watch what was being reported on American news outlets. However, even these broadcasts from Germany were products of news media systems and not the reports of individuals.
The fact that stories and images from the London crisis were being spread directly by individuals operating without the added filter of a reporter helped to make the crisis feel very immediate to people across the globe.
The same feeling of personal involvement has been experienced by readers of blogs written by Iraqis who were personaly involved in the events in their country in the last few years.
When it comes to blogging, this kind of news often assumes a very personal aspect and context. This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting new era of reporting, one that takes "New Journalism" to a logical next step by putting the power to shape how the news is written and read directly into the hands of the public...those who want to have the news.
There are many bloggers and cultural commentators who are champions of the weblog movement feel that this growing trend of individuals who getting their news from blogs is a good thing. They feel it makes the flow of information more democratic. By decentralizing the control that huge media networks exercise over news, blogs allow more voices to enter the field of debate about important current events.
Conversely, many people are adamantly opposed to the use of blogs as news outlets, and there are plenty of good arguments on this side of the debate. Unlike most established media outlets such as newspapers or television stations, few blogs have fact-checkers, and there is little attention paid to journalistic accountability on many blogs.
In fact, a great many blogs consist more of the blogger's opinions than of verifiable facts!
This obviously can lead to a rapid spread of misinformation, and more than one falsehood has taken the blogosphere by storm. Just check your emails to see how many people pick up and distribute the first exciting or provocative piece of news they see!
The questions about whether the concept of blogging news as it happens is ethical or not are very complicated, but no matter where you stand on the topic of current events blogs you are almost sure to agree that this movement has the potential, for good or for bad, to revolutionize how many modern people get their news.
If you are interested in blogging the news and blogging for cash at the same time, take a look at Rob Benwell's Blogging to the Bank.
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