Today you see the beginning of a new era: the era of the news blogger. In the beginning, blogging was all about chronicling your life and your opinion. People would read your blog to see into your personal life. It was like reading someone’s personal diary. Today, blogging has evolved into a news business for many.
People can make money from running a blog. So it is only natural that people extend blogging into reporting and breaking news from their perspective. Bloggers have started doing this to drive more people to their blog. With more people reading a blog, the higher the advertising revenue.
Bloggers do not generally go through the usual fact-checking process that traditional news outlets do. Some bloggers listen to and rewrite the rumor mill just to generate new content. It is those bloggers who produce stories rather than reports that often gain the most readers. They claim to report something when in reality is often nothing more than well-written speculation.
One advantage that bloggers have over news sites is that they do not have to abide by an organization’s standards and political views. The can have full poetic license with the words they write. As a journalist you aspire to bringing the nation to their knees for a big promotion with. For a blogger, the returns are more direct. Many bloggers benefit directly from increased traffic in the form of advertising revenue. “Exposing the ugly truth” often becomes the motive for many bloggers without regard to the long-term consequences.
News sites put more care into reporting trending news. It has always been and will continue to be in their long-term interests to do so. At the middle of any news story is the integrity of the facts and writing. Any reporter who has compromised these will have a much more difficult time writing compelling, believable news moving forward with the same of different organization.
Blogs are a great thing. They allow people to share their views with others around the world, creating an ever-growing source of information that you can sometimes trust. But be sure to take your individual blog reads with a grain of salt. Nobody has come up with a solution that holds bloggers the more stringent set of standards that the news sites have been held to. Given how fast technology evolves and often catches us by surprise, perhaps that will be the next big thing.