Big Blogger is watching!

The media news story in 2004 was, without a doubt, the emergence of blogs as an alternative source of news on the Internet. And yet blogs were not the new radio, the new television or even the new Internet news websites.

These were sites sourced, maintained and published by ordinary people, many of whom did not have any background or training in journalism. They used the forum to report what they considered to be news -- which wasn't always along the traditional news values -- while questioning the authenticy and quality of mainstream media reporting.

I do not think that blogs will replace the mainstream media as the predominant source of news and information; bloggers lack both the financial and human resources as well as the priviledged access that the mainstream media enjoys.

What the blogs will do in 2005 and hopefully beyond, is to watch over the mainstream media and expose cases of distortions, bias or sheer lazy reporting. We in the mainstream media have always watched over governments and other institutions around us.

We will continue to do so only this time, somewhere in cyberspace, Big Blogger will be watching!

Daniel