The Observer | Business | If you really want to know, ask a blogger

This nice article hammers home some points that traditional news media ought to keep in mind: Because bloggers are often experts in a field, and journalists are often not, the information found in a blog may frequently be more accurate than the information found in a corresponding news article. And because bloggers are not constrained by the commercial or political interests of a publisher, bloggers are able to report news that will not be covered (or that will be covered only from a certain point of view). Finally, because bloggers link freely, and because traditional news coverage is hidden behind subscription walls or registration screens, bloggers' coverage is more likely to show up on search results than that of traditional journalists. It seems to me that unless traditional media (a) begins to attract the writing of experts, (b) manages somehow to escape the biases inherent in its corporate structure, and (c) opens up its coverage to the web at large, then traditional media is in significant danger of being eclipsed by blog news coverage. By John Naughton, The Observer, June 1, 2003