Your Alternative News Source? Fuck that.

There's an underground buzz happening that says blogs are the new-and-improved, more accurate, less media-biased source for news in the new age.

Know what I think? It's bullshit.

Blogs can be about current events, sure. But allow me to point out the flaws in this system, that are just as pertinent as those pertaining to the media, yet largely overlooked.

Firstly, you've got the spectrum of crazy-hardcore-conservative to people who are so left wing they're coming back around to the right. Sure, they don't have the media bias per se, but they sure as hell have their own two cents about the issue, because if they didn't, it'd be pretty useless to talk about it.

Secondly, where did they first hear about this issue? Mr. Holmes, you've found a clue! If they have an opinion on the matter, and they weren't there first, they clearly got the idea from somewhere. Even this post is inspired by something I read somewhere else. That original source, which, for all intents and purposes, we will call a primary source, is the basis of the secondary blog post, meaning anything they gleaned from the accounts of a news reporter/journalist/scrapbook/photo album of the person who discovered this before.

Is it taking away from the news media? Nope. If anything, it's probably helping bolster news media events. If you consider that a blog entry can be a response to an article in a newspaper, for instance, the tech-savvy blogger can very easily link to the news report they got their information from. Lo and behold, someone would likely be interested in reading the 'original' material, click, read, boom. Another reader. The same can be done with televised news stories, I'm sure; YouTube and the wonders of 'free' information. By having an opinion, a blogger is helping boost the reader/viewership of news, because most intelligent people won't just take the blogger's opinion for salt. Then, and only then, can you have discourse in the blogosphere.

Long story short, blogs don't really give you anything more than a reiteration of news stories from somewhere else with an added bonus of some nameless Joe's two cents on the matter. Think of it as a more rapid, uncensored version of your basic Letters to the Editor. In the end, that's just what it is.

Peace, Love, and MarioKart
~Poindextra