Why blogs contribute to journalism June 12, 2014

According to the We Media report blogs contribute to journalism in at least four ways : fact checking, grassroots participation, adding more information, and filtering and editing information for dissemination. Fact checking is useful so that journalists can clarify or correct their stories and readers can add their corrections. This needs to be monitored frequently so that inaccurate or libelous comments by readers are removed. Grassroots participation can become invaluable if there are easy ways to have interactive stories, clickable links for information, and provide responsible comment. Readers also can submit ideas about the subject for the reporter to pursue. Adding more information as a story develops provides an update for readers when print publications will not be available or the web site won’t be updated until a particular time. This is often done by Tweets now as I follow Alia Beard Rau covering the Arizona legislature, and my Ohio State colleague covering the Kentucky legislature. Filtering and editing helps readers know where to go for additional information with links or giffs in stories. I found I received a number of comments on my blog when I posted a history of The Glouster Press, a newspaper that covered a mining area of Appalachian Ohio until its demise in the 1970s.