Blogger's Impact on Journalism?

This topic has to do with whether or not blogging has significantly impacted the print journalism industry.

After doing some research on the web I've come to the conclusion that most people do not think that blogging is journalism although it can contain news and descriptions of events. Wikipedia describes of a conference that talked about the credibility of bloggers as a whole. Here at the Wikipedia Article we see that credibility is indeed an issue. The results of the conference were that people needed to be skeptical of anything related to blogging. Second, I found that blogs are becoming incredibly popular. Blogs are so popular that thirty four percent of the internet spends time reading blogs according to Imedia Connections on their article: "The Popularity of Blogs". Lastly, I believe due to the popularity that blogs have influenced journalism because people who are involved with an organization can better comment about it than a news reporter who sees the outside. According to CNET News in their article "The Future of Blogging" we see that Wharton professor Dan Hunter compares bloggers with news papers. Apple employees are blogging about the latest technological breakthroughs and news employees blogged about Dan Rathers departure from CBS before he officially announced it. Blogging is revolutionizing the way we receive the latest information and the amount of information we can receive.

Therefore, I definitely believe that blogging has impacted print journalism. News reporters need to keep up with bloggers in any way possible. Instead of reporting on something obvious or easy to report on paid news reporters will have to go even further to get a story on something that the public is interested in, something that an average blogger couldn't afford or research on his or her own.