Blogging is another form of communication

Since I no longer call myself a journalist, and decided on the way home from Morro Bay that I'm an informationist, I see blogging as another technology tool for communication. Bottom line, its an easy tool for posting information on a Web page. That is something people have been doing, who weren't journalists, since the early 90's. Since then we've had wonderfully informative and effective Websites while at the same time we've had inaccurate to fraudulent Websites. That is the double-sided nature of the Web. And users of the Web have been navigating through the good and the bad all this time. I trust that they will continue to do a reasonably good job in evaluating blogs.

Over time bloggers are and will earn reputations for being good information sources or not. Those associated with traditional media should stand-out for the thoroughness, objectivity and professional aspects of their bogging.

I would like to throw out one other idea for journalists to consider; that media users may not be that interested in objectivity. The Web makes it easy to find multiple angles and perspectives on information, so many sides of a story are readily available. True objectivity is pretty hard to come by, no matter how honorably one tries so I'd rather get an insightful viewpoint that makes me think. As a media consumer, blogs give me access to alot more people's viewpoints, from experts to flaks. That gives me choices and, thus, more control over the information I receive. And that is what many Americans are demonstrating they want as exemplified through the growing popularity of iPods and TIVO.