Blogs believe the hype?
An informative article over at ArsTechnica informs us that blogs are mostly just repeating stories from Mainstream media and that there is not much original content. Blogs seem to work as amplifier for bigger stories rather then giving new insights and more thoughts. I kind of agree but also disagree with that observation. Firstly of course most of the blogs out there report on stories that the blog author read or saw somewhere else. Most blog authors do blog writing as a part time hobby - a hobby that can take lots of time away already with just repeating stories. Still those blog authors are filtering stories from their own subjective which is in itself a form of journalism - read a lot of columns in newpapers and you see that this form has been in "mainstream" media all along and is apriciated to see different opinions on different topics. Another thing is that its just not true that ALL bloggers just repeat "old media" stories in a new way. There is so much original creative content out there in the blogosphere its simply short from totally amazing. Try a search for any random topic you might think of and there is at least one blog out there that has informative information that you donīt find anywhere else all nicely ordered in blog format. Also there are first hand reports for news stories - read the bagdhad burning blog and you see a good example of this. So generally the critique from arstechnica is accepted to a certain degree but it needs to be seen from all angles and for that blogs do shape all media today more then any other "new media" form has in the past 10 years.
Now the vlogs are coming in and it seems they are even more "independent" from mainstream media - mostly due to copyright reasons - then the written blogs. They are totally creative and have 90% pure original content. Maybe the copyright laws are not bad after all sparking a truly free media revolution by prohibiting taking over content from the media powerhouses that control public perception?