Credibility of Weblogs as News Sources

FUTURIST: Credibility of Weblogs as News Sources

Readers may find blogs more credible than traditional media because blogs have no corporate interest to serve. They aren't censored by advertisers or constrained by editorial policies, and they are therefore a more democratic publishing medium. In the interest of "moving democratic media to the masses," the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab launched Blogdex, a blog tracking and listing service whose very existence seems to validate blogs as a legitimate trend in journalism.

We have yet to see how the new generation of high-tech journalism will stack up to traditional journalism in terms of quality and objectivity; with new technologies come questions about standards and ethics, warns OJR executive editor Larry Pryor. The publication launched a new "Future of News" section to address these questions and more, keeping an observant eye and an open dialogue on journalism's dynamic, bifurcating future.