Monday, December 29, 2008

There's still a need for professional journalists.

I like reading, watching and listening to the news. In addition, I also like to read some people's blogs. There's been a lot of talk about how the newspaper industry is failing as readership is dropping. While this is an unfortunate reality that I hope the industry can reverse, what really annoys me is when people say how on-line blogs are replacing newspapers in providing news.

Blogs are mainly editorials and not subject to the objectivity of journalism. Even a lot of web sites are editorial forums and not news providers, but tries to project themselves as if they are. Two recent examples highlighted this for me: OSNews and Ars Technica. People might mistaken them as providers of news, but honestly they are subjective editorials on news.

OSNews pretty much had to openly admit it (or remind their readers) as such in their post which basically said that the only way they can get people to submit articles is by removing objectivity. If an actual news establishment did such a thing then it spells the end of journalism.

Ars also clearly indicated that they are mainly the provider of commentary on news in their article which so clearly shows the author's opinion in his choice of wording that I hope people realizes that we can't depend on just any person or business who can put up a site for news.

And this is just my personal opinion.

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