"The Growing Importance of Blogs"

Hey, guys. I found an article on the web that relates to what we were talking about on Friday. Here's a link for it if you're interested: http://www.southernct.edu/organizations/rccs/news/blogs.html. This article was written by Terrell Ward Bynum, and speaks to the significant impact blogging has had on our society in recent years. In it, Bynum discusses some pros and cons of the blog, or 'Web Log'.

"Some blogs...can be very influential if the persons who create them are interesting personalities with important or provocative things to say... [and] can be effective means for people to promote themselves and their pet interests; and some people find them to be psychologically fulfilling tools for self expression."

I found this next little story particularly interesting in that it shows what a tremendous influence blogs can have on world events:

"During the 2004 United States presidential election, Gov. Howard Dean was the first presidential candidate to make very effective political use of a blog devoted to his campaign. Bloggers from all across America flocked to his blogsite, making comments, volunteering to help with his campaign, contributing money to his cause. Dean surprised himself and all his political opponents by raising over 50 million dollars and becoming the Democratic front runner until the primary elections were held."

The next excerpt could be considered a pro and a con:

"...some blogs have become “news sources,” publishing stories like newspapers, radio stations and TV stations. Some of these blogs are very partisan, publishing highly “slanted” stories as if they were genuine news. People working for these blogs began to call themselves “reporters,” and some were even allowed into the White House Newsroom with nationally known reporters from the major networks."

To me, this suggests that if you're going to get your daily news from a blog, you might also want to consider comparing it to and/or contrasting it with another news source to see if there are major differences, and to make sure you are getting your information from a reliable news source.

In the final paragraph of his article, Bynum relates a story from March of 2005, in which news bloggers in California leaked inside information of the Apple Computer Co. When they were taken to court, the bloggers claimed to be reporters and demanded to be protected by laws which state that a reporter does not have to disclose information about a source. The courts are now grappling with the question of whether or not to treat these bloggers as reporters protected by the shield law. Whatever their decision, it promises to be a landmark one that will affect internet users for years to come.

Sky