March 28, 2003
The Futures of News
The number and success of warblogs continues to shock and awe mainstream journalists, even Dan Gilmorr, who is more "new" media than old.
Gilmorr suggests that the rapid growth of aggreblogs - blogs that are aggregating news as it breaks - Command Post and The Agonist demonstrates that "the future of news is becoming more and more obvious."
As much a believer as I am in Dan's oracle-like abilities, that statement needs to be qualified: The future of news is multi-faceted, multi-platformed and, certainly, multi-voiced. Blogs will be component - providing near real-time updates and diversity of sources and point of view -- but so will be newspapers, as long as they recognize the changing news environment and adapt by becoming less dependent on breaking news and more assertive toward providing analysis, investigation and context.
I thought every large newspaper had already written the blog discovery story, but the Baltimore Sun weighed in with one today.
After interviews with Command Post founder Alan Nelson ("What's surprising to me, though, is how serious many bloggers are about finding the truth.") and Gilmorr ("The more voices, the better, in my view.") the story offers an observation about bloggers from columnist Matt Welch that all newspaper editors should paste on their keyboards:
"They may be amateurs, but they know how to engage readers and spark debate."
Links
Baltimore Sun Weblogs cover the war without mainstream restraints