How have blogs and the internet changed the way media is reported?

Blogs and the internet have changed the way news is reported, both for better and for worse. The rise of online news and blogs directly caused the decline of print newspapers and magazines. With the technology to access any news you want right from your laptop or cell phone, who would want to have to go out and get a newspaper? With online newspapers and blogs, people can specify which news they want to hear. Someone can easily type some keywords into a Google search, and they will probably get the article they are looking for. Although this is convenient, it has had some negative effects. Newspapers used to bring people together. Americans would read the same stories and the same papers every day. This brought people together and gave them a feeling of community. The internet and blogs have enabled the rise of sub-audiences in the media. People don’t have to read or hear about anything they are not interested in. There are millions of specialized news websites and blogs, and you have the power to easily find whatever you want to know. This is good because it allows people to easily find what they are interested in, but at the same time if they are reading a site that is dedicated to one topic as opposed to a newspaper full of different articles, they are narrowing their understanding of what is going on in the news.
Probably the most positive effect of blogs and the internet on the way news is reported is that it allows more people to be involved in reporting, and it allows many different points of view. Blogs have given people the opportunity to express their opinions on many things, including the news, to mass audiences. You can even see it through this blog, we are just freshman college students but we can go online and write our opinions, whatever they may be, through this blog. This allows a lot of positive expression from people whose voices you wouldn’t be able to hear in a printed newspaper. Before the internet and blogging, you had to be a well-known journalist to get your article published in a paper. Now, pretty much anyone can blog, start an online news site, or express their opinions about what is going on in the news online.