maryrambin:

Blogging doesn’t diminish face to face communication, but it does decrease consumption of other traditional forms of media. The audience purchases products depending on what their trusted bloggers reccommend. 

And they purchase those products because the blogger is generally a more reliable source. Traditional media is better for reporting hard news, whereas product, fashion, movie and book reviews just don’t fit nicely in print or on TV. A journalist is paid to be a journalist. They typically aren’t experts in business, fashion or sports.

With that said, my dad is a sportswriter. He loves sports and has followed it his whole life. His knowledge of sports history is second to none and he’s an outstanding sportswriter. However, he never played at the level of which he is covering. Is he qualified? I don’t know. Now, consider if a starting pitcher and a few other players got together after the game and wrote about the outcome. It would be a totally different, and perhaps refreshing, perspective. You would learn about intricacies of the game that you wouldn’t gather from the press box.

Blogs allow for that, traditional media doesn’t.

I don’t want to read about a pompous movie critic trashing a movie. He has no idea about the director’s objectives. I also don’t intimately know what kind movies this guy watches? There are movies I know I won’t like just because I won’t like them. They may be great—but should I be writing about it to the masses?

Blogs have definitely changed the landscape in how we consume information. It’s great to see that the blogosphere can shape things in a culture where traditionally the mainstream media outlets played a more prominent role in trends and fads.

There’s a market for every blog and a blog for every market. The same can’t be said about the mainstream media outlets.