How to Blog About Current Events As They Take Place
Blogging news stories as they occur is among the of the most fascinating and controversial applications of technology which bloggers have discovered. Something that makes the blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to revise a blog immediately, so the news on blogs is frequently more recent than the news in the paper, or on television. Unlike news provided by by these other media, news that appears on blogs doesn’t have to travel through a group of publishers and administrators before it reaches the public eye. This has some positive aspects, and several particulart disadvantages.
One of the most notable cases of news hitting a blog before appearing in other media happened in July 2005 when terrorism struck London. As passengers were removed from a subway car near an explosion, one man took several photographs of the scene with his cellphone, and within an hour these pictures were posted online. First-person accounts of the disaster began showing up on blogs soon after these photos appeared, and people all over the world discovered the events in London by reading the words and seeing the photos posted by bloggers.
The fact that these stories and pictures were being spread directly by persons operating without the added filter of a reporter helped to make the crisis feel very immediate to people across the globe. When it comes to blogging, news often appears in a very personal context. This has the potential to be the beginning of an thrilling new era of reporting, one that takes “New Journalism” to it’s logical next step by putting the power to shape how the news is written and read directly into the hands of the public.
Many bloggers and cultural commentators who are champions of the weblog movement feel that this increasing trend of people who getting their news from blogs is a good thing, because it makes the flow of information more democratic. By decentralizing the control of news, blogs allow more voices to enter the field of debate about important current events. However, many people are adamantly in opposition to the use of blogs as news outlets, and there are plenty of good arguments on this side of the debate.
Unlike newspapers or television stations, few blogs have fact- checkers, and there is little attention paid to journalistic accountability on many blogs. This can lead to the rapid spread of misinformation, and multiple falsehoods has taken the blogosphere by storm. The questions around whether blogging news as it happens is ethical or not are very complicated, but no matter where you stand on the topic of recent events blogs you are almost sure to agree that this movement has the potential to transform how modern people get their news.
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