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Blogs to You!

The debate continues! Newspapers in decline or the world of news and comment changing, dramatically, with the advent of on-line journalism and the ever-pervasive blogs?

It's a on-going discussion, and analysis, which will continue for some time, but there is no getting away from the fact that the dissemination of news and opinion-forming pieces - if not downright simple politicking - is undergoing huge changes. Just think of move.on in the US and GetUp in Australia.

A veteran newspaper man puts the whole thing into perspective in this most interesting piece, "Bogs to You" in NewMatilda.com [well worth subscribing to by the way]:

"A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,’ said the great American playwright Arthur Miller in 1961, and now the technology is in place to allow that conversation to happen in real time.

Blogging, podcasting and video sharing on sites like YouTube are dramatically changing the media landscape, allowing a host of new voices around the world to be heard. Blogging isn’t journalism on the cheap, as some critics have suggested — it’s a natural extension of the core mission of journalism: helping foster a vigorous public dialogue. And it’s allowed us to tap into the wisdom in the crowds.

I’ve been an online journalist for more than a decade. When I first saw a web browser in August 1993, I knew that the internet would be a powerful force for remaking journalism. For those of us who have been online since before the rise of the World Wide Web, the internet has always been about interaction and communication, not just a publishing platform or a better shopping experience."

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