Reasons why we shouldn't blog...

It seems like it's easy to blame a bloggers for the crap on the internet.  I mean after all, they aren't even real journalists, or are they?

Daniel Cavanagh doesn't consider himself a journalist.  Perhaps this is why he doesn't consider it ethically wrong to interview people and not mention that they might be recorded, or that the information they give would be used for a blog.  To many journalists, this is ethically wrong.  But what is a blogger?  Does writing about subjects in their community require them to adhere to the same standards as journalists?

With the struggle and eventual death of newspapers, the fate of news both locally and nationally lays in the hands of people like Daniel Cavanagh, but what are the rules to play by?  The Los Angeles Times isn't as highly regarded as it once was, with people complaining about the lack of content or the lack of class of the Times.

But what can be expected?  News is evolving and it looks like blogging is becoming a more legitimate source of news.   It's replacing the big city papers, and spring up in small towns where newspapers haven't been.  It's easier to do, but ethics and accurate reporting still need to be trademarks of news sources.  Without these, blogging is just a bunch of meaningless blab.

For me, blogging is a tool.  It's to spread the word, and maybe Cavanagh considers it to be so, as well.  For him, it helps him expose things, and I want to expose things myself.  If it ticks people off, then so be it.