John Naughton is the latest to pipe in on the whole bloggers / journalist / google placement thing. He makes some good points including one I’ve been noticing for years and bitching about now and again;
In fact, when it comes to many topics in which I have a professional interest, I would sooner pay attention to particular blogs than to anything published in Big Media – including the venerable New York Times. This is not necessarily because journalists are idiots; it’s just that serious subjects are complicated and hacks have neither the training nor the time to reach a sophisticated understanding of them – which is why much journalistic coverage is inevitably superficial and often misleading, and why so many blogs are thoughtful and accurate by comparison.
Exactly right. There’s a lot of crap in weblogs too, but once you find the good ones, you dont need Big Media anymore. In blogs the “coverage” is often closer to the source and not twisted for ratings. Sure the writing and research is often amateurish but a blog is rarely alone, the interaction and mutual correction between multiple voices more than makes up for it.