That's mostly true. A lot of what passes for "news," though, is simply rewriting of wire service copy, press conference stenography, summarizing what happened at campaign events, and the like. Citizen journalists can get that info spread without mainstream reporters.

My view has been that where the strength of the bloggers lies, is with analysis of the news, not particularly the reporting of it. Certainly, what the bloggers looking at the fake TANG documents did created news, but how it did that was analysis of what was being reported. This goes to Wayne's point about creds.

Come to think on it, that has some rather interesting ramifications on why AP went nuts on fair use... They're reluctant to be judged by bloggers, who use their own words and pictures against them.

Blogs have their faults but they have advantages over standard journalism. Every fact and assumption can quickly and easily be challenge. It is up to the blog system to sort them out. Yes there are idiot bloggers but those usually become quickly apparent. Also it gives those who have knowledge in areas to share their knowledge. Reporters often don’t have a clue what they are talking about.

I think the problem is the MSM has gone too much into the opinion and gossip field. They should leave that to the bloggers and concentrate in the areas that bloggers have a hard time at.

Serious news requires someone collecting the information, and for the most part bloggers are free-riding on the information newspapers pay to collect.

That's mostly true. A lot of what passes for "news," though, is simply rewriting of wire service copy, press conference stenography, summarizing what happened at campaign events, and the like. Citizen journalists can get that info spread without mainstream reporters.

Going to Iraq and reporting back on what's going on is absolutely vital. Some of that can and is being done by non-professionals. But, certainly, it'd be hard to get that coverage without full-time pros. But that's the long form journalism I'm talking about.

The internet has drastically changed who can spread information.

But most bloggers are still highly dependent on newspapers to collect information. I would seriously disagree with your statement that news is easily-obtainable. Serious news requires someone collecting the information, and for the most part bloggers are free-riding on the information newspapers pay to collect.

The long run structural problem if bloggers displace newspapers is who will pay to collect the news. For example, will major bloggers pay to send their own reporters to future war zones as the newspapers have for generations?

Is this filtered?
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/07/afp_iraq_photo_follies/

Not sure I follow?

Clearly, AFP's filter wasn't very good on that one.

If you're saying the blogs overreacted, the correction mechanism was quick and transparent. Within a couple of hours we figured out what the photo actually was and posted that, with links. That's more than AP or AFP would do, as their habit is to disappear inconvenient errors.

The need for professional, full-time journalists isn’t going away. But we no longer need them simply to spread easily-obtained information; there are just too many faster, less filtered ways of doing that nowadays. Nor do we need them anymore as opinion shapers; there are simply too many outstanding pundits out there to read them all, so people can pick and choose based on their interests and tastes.

In short, what's needed is a little-known thing called 'the truth'. As an example of how what we've been fed isn't such, I refer you to the graphic as one example.

Is this filtered?
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/07/afp_iraq_photo_follies/