Blogging > Quizing

The articles for today's reading were certainly interesting in how they laid out the different problems for newspapers continued existence.

Rosensteel looking for sense-making news: this is somewhat of a fallacy since even traditional media sources can be biased and thus sense making news really cannot exist rather a person has to make the decision themselves about which news sources they trust. Rosensteel says that one has to sift through various sources to find a type of sense-making news but i would argue that this already exists because of the different cable and network news outlets. Additionally on further reflection wouldnt it make more sense if there were more more sources for news or else harmful knowledge about a company might not come to light if that company also owns the primary news networks. I also see that blogs can cover things that "no one else covers" because of the ability of anyone to make one. If there was not a blog devoted to the subject someone could simply create one. There are also an immense number of blogs available. To say that something is not covered means that you might not have searched enough.

Blogs have also uncovered many different things and can be used for investigative reporting. A recent example was an article discussing Hillary Clinton's chances of becoming president. One person used a delegate calculator and blogged that even if she won the next 12 contests (this was before Wyoming) she would not have enough delegates to pull ahead of Senator Obama. This story was then later put onto the evening news. Clearly investigative work can be done online. I also fail to see how it can be better done by newspapers that are controlled by some of these "powerful interests" that the media has to keep honest.

The outing piece represents more of what i would recommend for bloggers. Tools to allow them to access more information is certainly a tool that is worth investigating. I am also not terribly opposed to having someone else look at your piece before you post it. There is a lot of flexibility and laxness on the web for grammatical errors but another person editing the piece might not be such a bad idea for readability concerns. Outing brings up a good point about a limit of blogging, the ability to access credentials to important events. I feel that this is a problem that will slowly dissolve over time as blogs are made into more of the "4th estate" that outing among others claims them to be.

Kessler has an interesting article to be sure. Part of it shows that he thinks newspapers aernt dead rather they have an advantage when it comes to advertising since they already have a base that reads their product. He also says that there is still time for newspapers as paid blog subscriptions are still experimental and newspapers have always been a product that has to be paid for. Perhaps if blogs are a subscription service they might not be as prominent. He also goes into detail about how media rights seem to be eroding as the ability to stream media on p2p networks is becoming so widespread. He redirects the fear for the future to tv and cable rather than newspapers in the end of this article. A point to which i somewhat agree.

Steiger's article seems to be pretty dismal in terms of forecasting any hope for newspapers. He sees that the ease of publishing has been dropped to a level now where anyone can be part of the process. He does bring up some idea for a future of newspapers however, it is not in the way that traditional newspapers would prefer it. Near the end of his article Steiger speaks about how companies like Blomberg's data network could merge with the New York Times in order to keep the investigative reporting quality and also compete on different media levels. This is an interesting concept that merits some thought. It would allow for newspapers to continue but they would be one in a variety of sources that people would look at. I still fail to see how the costs of production would be solved by mergers like this however. It seems that newspapers will continue to see diminishing returns as their viewership shrinks and since many more people can get news for free online it doesnt seem like it will take too much longer until newspapers are considered somewhat obsolete. The investigative reporting will continue except it will be for webpapers and other media.