A new model of journalism

A recent online presentation by Kevin Anderson at The Guardian newspaper in London has stimulated some thoughts on the new model of journalism. (Perhaps this is because the newspaper industry has had its most significant drop in ad revenue since records on these things were started in 195o? Sources here and here)

His thoughts are that the blogosphere has caused huge changes over the last few years and to make this point even more obvious a recent story has come to fruition....

Back in 2002 Dave Winer (a blogger) bet Martin Nisenholtz (CEO of New York Times Digital) that:

“In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news
stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site.”

That bet was won by Mr Winer recently and more important than the $2000 stake .... a significant point was made (by 4 to 1 actually).

Critics of blogging have for years been saying that the medium will die off or (to add insult to injury) just evolve into 'normal' jouralism. Harsher critics say it just shows "Google’s arcane and deeply bizarre search engines that favor blogs over real news sources".

However, what you cannot deny, is that blogging is here to stay and is continuing to significantly influence how and what we find out there.