Bloggers, A Journalist Source

As I was reading some headlines regarding the Virginia Tech masacre, I ran into an article, "Journalists look to bloggers for Virginia Tech story" By Daniel Terdiman, Staff Writer, CNET News.com, which demonstrates how Blogging has become another source for Journalist.

This article is about how journalist are using blogs as a source to the information they may need. Allowing it for a faster and more efficient process. "The Web basically cuts the middleman out of the picture, and allows the people who were there on the scene to get their story out to a global audience immediately...Of course, journalists can follow up on that, find these first-person witnesses or potential witnesses and interview them to draw more details out of them to further complete the story. So it allows the whole newsgathering process to move much more quickly."

The example used was that of a blogger who posted his girfriends story and experience in the Virginia Tech massacre. Reporters from various organizations got wind of this blog entry and immediate tried to contact the person to get first hand information and interview the blogger (ideally girlfriend).