Citizen Journalism in the Washington Post

Washington Post article on "citizen journalists aka "Bloggers"

I wrote on this at Daily Kos today and I am going to cross post the diary here as well: enjoy

With trepidation the Washington Post published an article on "bloggers" and what impact they are having on the "news".

Storming the News Gatekeepers
On the Internet, Citizen Journalists Raise Their Voices

is the title of the article, Daily Kos even managed to get a mention

Anderson at Large is nowhere near as widely read or heavily linked as RedState or Daily Kos, the popular conservative and liberal blogs. Technorati, which tracks a site's number of links, says Anderson's blog has received 236 blog mentions, while RedState and Daily Kos, by contrast, have received 21,000 and 107,000, respectively.

Gee, with remarks like this do we think Daily Kos will be around for awhile? the link to the article sorry I forgot to add it CRS ya know?

The main body of the diary:

I don't see myself as a "citizen journalist" I am a person with a point of view, and issues that are important to me and I like to think, some other people. I tend mostly to deal with veterans issues, and how the politics affect our wallet issues, healthcare and the nations "PROMISE" to the military, that if you are "hurt or killed while on active duty" we will take care of you and your family, medically and financially, even President George W. Bush used it as a campaign slogan in 2004's election cycle we all remember "A Promise Made Is A Promise Kept" and this year we get the front page stories about Walter Reed and the VA claims system that is overwhelmed and has 800,000 claims on appeal and it takes this nations veterans 2 or more years to get a decision of their claims.

That doesn't mean the claim is decided to a veterans satisfaction, it just takes that long to be told "denied" again and then the veterans have to appeal to the Court of Veterans Appeals which in all can take 5-7 years before they get a decsion from the "final court" many times it is a "remand" which just means the VA has to relook at the medical evidence, obtain more and make another decision, which starts the "roller coaster" all over again.

I write about it, and PTSD which is a prevalent problem amongst veterans and their families, and PTSD DOES affect the entire family, not just the veteran, it touches mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, children and then it enters the workplace and the community.

The article on "citizen journalism" led me to write this response to the article and posted it online

I post at daily Kos as testvet6778 and have since 2005 I also write my own blog
http://vets4politics.blogspot.com/

Which is listed by my local paper http://www.thestateonline.com/bloggers/politicsblogs.html as Military& Veterans: Politics for the Deserving which deals with issues that pertain mostly to veterans, but which we all know active duty military will become. I deal with all kinds of links to MSM and write many opinion pieces. They are probably as factual as anything Fox news produces. If memory serves me right, Fox won a lawsuit against a "journalist" in a Florida Court last year based on the facts that Fox news edited the piece and ignored facts, cut out factual pieces to slant the news the way they wanted it presented and the court sided with Fox, stating that "news" did not HAVE to contain facts to be aired. So is MSM really credible just because they are on the air waves or cable? How accurate were they on the run up to the war? What happened to objectivity? Investigative journalism is a dying art, and the nation is suffering for it, the corporate boardroom is dominating "facts" and the unwillingness to anger advertisers, for veterans and the military one of the strongest voices was Don Imus, he asked the hard questions, remember when he confronted John McCain about Walter Reed, and he asked him "don't you have eyes" couldn't you see it? He at least asked the people with influnce the right questions, and they kept coming back on his show, because he gave them air time, despite the fact he does ask "hard questions", we the citizens need the "truth" not the Faux version either, real facts and regardless of a citizen journalist gets to the core of it or a MSM reporter does, the nation wins.

It is my opinion the country is better off with sites like Daily Kos, it lets average citizens speak their piece in a way that MSM never thought about, and fellow citizens can recommend it so it gets read by many other people. The "blogosphere" like it or not is here to stay, and YES we will impact "MSM" and their influence and at times their ridicule.

This article is not "blogosphere friendly" not real smart by WAPO in my opinion.

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