I am checking my Google Reader on a daily basis and I see how a person could get pretty compulsive about wanting to check their Reader throughout the day. My Google Reader seems like the ultimate newspaper to me, with all its content tailored to my interests and constantly updated 24 hours a day. But there is a real irony; the technology that makes Google Reader possible may well lead to the bankruptcy of traditional newspapers and the death of journalism as a profession. And then where will all the hardcore news come from? And who will do the reporting? I understand that it is traffic, or the number of hits that a site gets that makes for profitability on the web, and sites get the highest volume in large part by being the first to report a story. The need for speed works against careful reporting.
And as more and more of our culture moves online, as more of the news we get, and the way we communicate and socialize moves online; the more important it is that all layers of society have access to Internet technology. According to the Knight Commission report,the free flow of information is vital to communities and is a necessary condition for individuals to be socially, economically and politically first class citizens. So I wonder how these issues are playing out in our classrooms.
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I also worry about whether there will be funds for trained journalists to do in depth investigative reporting in the future. I also worry about ethics. Professional journalists have an ethics code that they follow and a procedure in place to make sure they do. Some don't of course but at least someone is policing them and they have a standard. What standard do bloggers have to meet? None! What training have they had? Who knows? I don't want to have to depend on getting all my news from the masses.
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