This Just In: Blogs are NOT News

Blogs are not news. I know that you, my pitifully dense reader, will not be able to understand this, but I will try again and again (much like training a half-brain dead dog, although I’d would love to exercise the wonderful option of taking you to a lonely field and blowing your brains out to put you out of my misery). Blogs are not news. They might contain a news story, with the poster’s opinion about the story (“oh look, gas prices are up- I think this is bad.” one blogger writes. What’s bad is your continuance to drain the natural resources and choke the population with your polluted genes) but a blog is not a news story. CNN (oh crapulence of crapulence) had Inside the Blogs, which they would actually air stories from people’s blogs. The reporting process in America is flawed, but still focused on getting some sort of truth, removing the “I” from the story, watching the slander (or libel if in print), making sure the facts are correct, and edited by a staff of fairly educated folks before it hits the airwaves/paper. The opposite extreme is a reporter’s blog, which has the beginnings of a story... and that’s it. There’s very little fact checking, or a research staff to do the job for you, or editing, or objectivity; and yet CNN (seeping a thick yellow puss of sensational journalism clinging desperately to any story and calling it breaking or developing news because they’re stuck having to make it look like important events are always happening) airs their blog segment as news. Half-baked ideas from stories that never made it to the press or airwaves are now given validity without the (however slanted) backing of the press room staff and editor. And why are the stories reaching the blogs and NOT being aired or printed? The stories political orientation might be too right or left (oh thank GOD I’ve lost my audience, no doubt they have clicked somewhere else, seeking words that are very short and a site that has some cheap flash animation with a little gore), the facts might not be there, the story itself might be flawed in a few different ways, the possibilities are infinite. Blogs are journals, scrapbooks of information, not an organized and well thought-out news story. If you, my scholarly pissant of a reader, think that Colin Powell puts insider information in his blog (“Dear Blog- planned out surprise attack scenarios for N. Korea. I think we’ll win!”) you’re wrong. Blogs are for 13 year old girls who want to list their middle school crushes, not news worthy stories for CNN. Please. Stop Reading Blogs.