Fox News — Sensationalist?

I just went to our cafeteria here at work to get some coffee and saw this “headline” on Fox News…”Bloggers a Threat?”

To be fair, I (thankfully) couldn’t hear what they were saying, only see the alert they had scrolling across the bottom of the screen. But are these guys serious? I used to think that the whole blogosphere vs. mainstream media thing was sort of a ploy by bloggers to make themselves seem a little more important than they are. Now I’m not so sure.

Even locally and regionally, there have been incidents like this, that show the divide is very real, and the tension is building on both sides.

In general, I think local news outlets do a decent job at reporting. But there really isn’t much analysis of local news except in the blogosphere. True, there are editorials in the newspaper, but without competition from the blogosphere there would be no balance of opinions. In this sense, there is a real market (need?) for local blogging, and I think that may scare local media.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is national coverage, with several 24 hour stations and analysis of the news–infotainment. Large media outlets have a lot ($$$) on the line, and cannot afford to only report the news. They have to entertain their viewers to keep them glued and keep the ad dollars rolling in. It seems to me that they are afraid of the blogosphere because they are actually getting scooped on stories that matter and are losing journalistic credibility. Others **cough O’Reilly cough** just can’t seem to take the heat of competition.

But I could be wrong.

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