Blogs as the future of journalism, revisited:

Sadly, many journalists just don’t seem to get it. This Techdirt article chronicles its attempt to engage in meaningful dialogue a reporter who wrote that the Wikipedia concept was dangerous and unreliable. Go read the article yourself–it’s definitely worth the 2 minutes.

The reporter seems to believe that “journalists” can only be trusted if they work for a mainstream outlet with an editorial board. Never mind the fact that said publications can be as bad as any personal blog (as I pointed out in my previous posting on the WSJ article on purported terrorists that turned out to be Syrian musicians).

The fact is that the public is more sophisticated than ever, and with access to primary sources of information, are more than capable of filtering that information and forming their own opinions.

The rise of the Internet and the death of distance allows me to learn about any event straight from the source. And while I may have to endure a Rashomon-like uncertainty about what really happened, I’ll end up with a better understanding than had I waited for some AP hack to put together an official news story.

To claim that people can’t trust open source news is akin to claiming that file-sharing will destroy music, or that VCRs destroyed the movies.