Journalists increasingly read blogs to pick up tips. Blogs have become a network of capillaries that feed the nation's veins of information. For that reason, blogging's freewheeling, unfettered style makes it a juicy target for manipulation.
In these early days, blogging still has the charm of guileless transparency, which in the blogosphere means that everyone -- no matter how cranky or hysterical -- is presumed to be speaking his or her mind with sincerity. It is this air of conviction that makes bloggers such potent advocates.
However, if history is any indicator, such earnestness will attract those who would exploit it, and they include some canny, inventive people. There is already talk of bloggers who would consider publishing items for cash and commercial blogs that tout products.
Blogging is especially amenable to introducing negative information into the news stream and for circulating rumors as fact. Blogging's fact-checking apparatus is just the built-in truth squad of those who read the blog and howl loudly if they wish to dispute some assertion. It is, in a sense, a place where everyone has his own truth.
With the status conferred by convention credentials, blogging has arrived as an engaging, important new player in the information carnival. But should blogging displace traditional reporting and journalism, as some in the blogosphere predict it will, then the steak will have been swapped for the sizzle. It's better to have both.
Alex S. Jones is director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
