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Newspapers are vintage, and vintage is cool. But as with record players, rotary dial telephones and typewriters, have newspapers become something that people use merely for the novelty of feeling as if they are living in the past? Print media is commonly referred to as ‘old media’ these days, but does that mean print journalism will eventually to die from its old age?

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So far I have illustrated a few cases where blogs have reached major news stories, where bloggers have been successful in bringing down major news outlets, politicians and journalists. It’s not hard to see that blogs are often making big news now, but can it work the other way? Can we rely on a blog to bring us the news the way we rely on newspapers, television, or even other online news outlets?

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Dan Rathers’ was not the first scalp claimed by bloggers in their war on the mainstream media’s misrepresentation of the truth. In 2002, just under two years prior to the Rathergate incident, Republican Trent Lott was the first to be bitten by the blogosphere when bloggers took notice of comments that he made at a birthday celebration for former presidential candidate Strom Thurmond.

During the celebration, which was being covered by many major news outlets, Lott stated that he thought that America could have avoided many of the problems it currently faced if Thurmond had been elected president during his bid for the office. This all seems pretty innocent; it’s not uncommon for politicians to sound over-eager in their praise for their outgoing predecessors (did I mention that this was Thurmond’s 100th birthday party?), though Lott’s comments seem a lot more questionable when you consider just what sort of policies from the past he was suggesting would fix America’s woes.

( Read on )

The Australian Government has plans to introduce an internet filtering system, that will prevent access to material such as pornography (the legal and illegal kinds) and websites discussing abortion and anorexia, as well as making internet connections slower and more costly in a country with already dismal broadband speed and availability. The response from the Australian public has so far been a largely resounding ‘no’, but as its implementation looms closer and closer, I feel we have much more than just a few porn sites to lose.

( Australia will begin to lose its democracy if this filter is to be implemented )