"Blogging, Journalism and Credibility": Reaction
This article points out an interesting dilemma that has risen between professional journalists and bloggers, but overlooks a major cultural movement that has allowed this power struggle to occur that lies beyond the sudden accessibility of online technology -- mainly, society's continued questioning of the term "objective" and whether or not an objective account of any occurence can actually exist.
The rise of feminism and multi-culturalism during the 60's and 70's called into question what was previously accepted as an objective point of view as a mainly Caucasian, male and western point of view. Books like "Gender and Science" showed that no matter how objective a point of view was purported to be, it was deeply affected by the socialization and cultural assumptions of the observer. People were beginning to realize that much of the information they received was colored by the media outlet from which they received it, not necessarily as part of a media conglomeration conspiracy, but merely by the fact of their geographic location, the language they spoke and the society in which they lived.
The rise of so many media outlets has further proven this. For example, ABC offered very different news coverage of the war in Iraq than Fox news than Aljazeera. People today are more media savvy and aware that the version of events they receive depends on from where they receive them.
I think the rise of blogging as a competitive news source stems from this realization that objective journalism is an impossible ideal, that information will always be tainted by its delivery. Even a first-hand account depends on your point of view.
The appeal of bloggers lies in the very fact that they do not pretend to be objective but blatantly state their perspectives and that their accounts are affected by that. It's more informative to read a perspective that is based on a single viewpoint, than read an account that is affected by certain views but masked in supposed objectivity. Objectivity is more obtainable by reading several accounts from varying perspectives and finding the common thread.
Or maybe, there is no such thing as a single, universal account of any event, that all of history should be a composition of individual accounts and instead of searching for a universal version, we should be open to a myriad of perspectives, each as factual as the next, depending on where you're standing.