10 Ways Blogging Has Changed the Way We Get News

Once upon a not-so-distant time, most of us got our news from the evening television broadcast and a handful of print options. With the explosion of the internet in the last fifteen years, and blogging within the last decade, the way that we process and even access current events has changed. Here are ten of the ways that the blogosphere has shaped the way we get the news.

1. Left, Right and Neutral (And Everything in Between) – Gone are the days of a single outlet reporting spun stories; in the internet age, readers can access dozens of different perspectives and opinions on the same subject in order to better form their own.
2. Information Tailored to the Issues We’re Most Affected By – Instead of being limited to the same fifteen news items that everyone else in the neighborhood is reading or watching, modern news-seekers are able to tailor their information experience to their own interests and the issues their passionate about. One possible drawback is that more people are experts in a single area, with very little grasp of current events outside of that field.
3. A Rallying Point For Activism – The Egyptian revolution, the Occupy Wall Street movement and many other activist movements have been fostered and maintained by microblogging sites like Twitter, as well as traditional blogs. Before this technology, it would have been much more difficult to rally the amount of support that these causes were able to in a relatively short time.
4. No Content Length Constraints – While nightly news broadcasts are limited by time slot and print publications are limited by physical space, there’s no length constraints for bloggers. This makes it much easier to provide extremely in-depth information, rather than coverage of a few key points.
5. Faction Lines Are More Evident – Because news and political bloggers have no editor to encourage neutrality, the faction lines and political leanings of a blogger and their readers are far more evident and more vocally discussed than in previous generations.
6. Incendiary Topics Get Coverage – Before the advent of personal news blogs, journalists were discouraged or even outright forbidden to provide in-depth coverage to hot-button or subversive topics; the advent of the blogosphere has changed that greatly. Sites like WikiLeaks have made it possible for bloggers to access and report information that would have once been completely out of reach.
7. Breaking News is Reported Almost Instantly – Within moments of the crash, photographs of Flight 1549’s 2009 stint in the Hudson river appeared on blogs, microblogs and news outlets around the world. This is simply one example of the sense of immediacy that comes with news blogging.
8. The Global Scope is More Evident – As readers from around the world contribute their opinions in the comments section or in their own blogs, the global scope and ramifications of certain situations have become more evident.
9. Comments Allow Interaction – Throwing your own two cents into a blogger’s comment section allows them to personally respond; this level of interaction with journalists was unheard of before the Internet Age. Previous generations were forced to be content with letters to an editor that were unlikely to even be published.
10. Information is Constantly Available – Instead of structuring our day around television broadcasts and the arrival of a newspaper, modern Americans can access any news item they want from almost anywhere, thanks to constantly updated blogs and ubiquitous mobile devices.

Blogging and the internet in general has totally transformed the distribution of news on every level, globally, nationally and locally. It is not likely that it will ever return to the limited structures of the past.

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