Power of the Blogs" and the Sherpas Who Write Them.
*******************Excerpt******
The article --in the business ssection-- recognizes that MSM has been filtering news, has been selectively quoting sources, and has been upended by blogs that do neither.
"The good old days" when those with the access could control the story are gone. Meloncholy is the best way to describe the air of the piece's pro agenda-journalism slant. Like a buggy maker's sighs as the cars that first annoyed then disturbed finally became not a nuisance or a challenge but an eclipse.
"They will always need buggies," I am sure the best buggy assembler said to himself:
***************************
See link for the rest of Hugh's comments....
January 02, 2006
Journos Reckon With Empowered Readership, Still Mostly Clueless
*******************************Excerpt**********
The media revolution of the past three years has introduced a level of empowerment to the consumers of mass media unlike anything that has ever existed before, and that empowerment comes primarily through the blogosphere and the Internet. The New York Times' Katherine Seelye explores some of the impact felt by journalists and editors at having to make themselves accountable to their readers:
**************snip*********************
What the technology allows people like me to do is to become our own newspaper, our own media outlet, with the entire blogosphere acting as oversight to my posts. It takes the same basic activities that reporters perform -- fact-gathering, quote-gathering, interviews on occasion, and publication -- and then subjects the result to a peer-review process that the media long since gave up.
It's that crucial component that Seelye misses in her article, and that the media misses when it considers the impact of the blogosphere. Blogs get their assumptions wrong and facts incorrect as well, but the natural peer-review process exposes it pretty quickly -- and our credibility suffers if we don't acknowledge it. The Exempt Media doesn't bother to do peer review or act in any kind of competitive manner at all, except in narrow geographic areas where newspapers and local TV stations compete for consumer attention.
****************************************
See link for the full article....