News and commentary about the intersection of information technology, politics, and policy presented by the members of Digital Politics, a course at Hamilton College.
After studying what has happened to newspapers and investigative reporting in the past decade or so, I'm not very surprised. As depressing as the thought of living in a world in which the "light of knowledge" has burned out is, I can't help feeling that this is probably the road we are doomed to follow.
I thought much of this article could have been part of an anti-blogosphere argument. Although the author also references talk radio shows, columnists and pundits, I think that bloggers are the ones that most often fall into this trap of reporting news that has not yet been confirmed. This is in part due to the pressure they face to break stories first(they can easily update their posts later). The spread of all this "knowledge" is enabled by the nature of the blogosphere-- anyone can post anything that they believe or that supports their initial opinions. There is no need to check the facts and often no way of getting in touch with a credible source. It is worrisome that we now have to be concerned about "news ignorance" in the mainstream media as well.
More worrisome is the article's claim that "ever-more constricting economic forces [are] tightening around the feasibility of effective newsgathering." If this is the case, blogs will seem like a perfect solution.
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After studying what has happened to newspapers and investigative reporting in the past decade or so, I'm not very surprised. As depressing as the thought of living in a world in which the "light of knowledge" has burned out is, I can't help feeling that this is probably the road we are doomed to follow.
I thought much of this article could have been part of an anti-blogosphere argument. Although the author also references talk radio shows, columnists and pundits, I think that bloggers are the ones that most often fall into this trap of reporting news that has not yet been confirmed. This is in part due to the pressure they face to break stories first(they can easily update their posts later). The spread of all this "knowledge" is enabled by the nature of the blogosphere-- anyone can post anything that they believe or that supports their initial opinions. There is no need to check the facts and often no way of getting in touch with a credible source. It is worrisome that we now have to be concerned about "news ignorance" in the mainstream media as well.
More worrisome is the article's claim that "ever-more constricting economic forces [are] tightening around the feasibility of effective newsgathering." If this is the case, blogs will seem like a perfect solution.
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