The Washington Times: Special Report What’s all the blog about?
This article was picked up by both Rick Bruner and Debbie Weil (who's
picture is in the article). The article goes over the standard
stories and stats. There is an interesting point, though, that I
don't think is on the mark:
Consumers
are unlikely to abandon established newspapers, magazines and TV news
programs for bloggers as long as the mainstream press delivers “quality
journalism,” according to Charlene Li, a principal analyst at Forrester
Research Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., group that tracks technology
trends. “People want quality journalism, and that tends to exist
in traditional institutions. That isn't to say bloggers don't do
quality journalism, because some of them do,” she said.
I think bloggers are
beginning to chip away at traditional media, especially in the tech
sector. I often first get wind of big tech stories from blogs, or
can gauge how important a story is by how many times I've
seen it posted (at which time I sometimes will post, or resist the
temptation to…everyone doesn't have to blog about the Google IPO, for
example). As webfeed grow in popularity, I think the
“traditional” journalism will be eroded even more.
You know blogging has gone mainstream when air-conditioning contractors are doing it.
Blogs
— short for Web logs — are online journals that, until recently,
have been the domain primarily of amateur political pundits, conspiracy
theorists and pseudo-experts on any number of topics.
