Blogs vs. MSM: An Uneasy Truce

Henry Jenkins wrote an interesting article entitled Blog This. He is amazed at the amount of people who blog every day - from the person blogging in the conference he attended to churches to political junkies.

Like most outside observers of the blog phenomenon, Jenkins says that most bloggers: "...might leave you thinking that these are simply a bunch of obsessed adolescents with too much time and bandwidth." Most people are skeptical of anything new, including my parents. When my dad asked me what I was learning in class, he asked me what a class on blogs was supposed to teach me.

Jenkins says that if regular people "surf" the web, bloggers "snowboard" it. They are quick on their toes - instant reporters who gather and link to the most current part of the internet. In class, we talked about the bloggers who brought down Dan Rather in the CBS Memogate scandal. Blogs are slowly venturing into full-scale reporting, and they are grabbing the attention of the mainstream media (MSM).

Looking into his crystal ball, Jenkins sees a future where blogs remain in harmony with the MSM. He envisons an "uneasy truce" that is negotiated between the MSM and the blogs. While the MSM can dictate the news cycle and set the agenda based upon their captive audience and the sheer monstrosity of their operations, blogs serve to redefine the message by providing an alternate forum to ensure that every side of the issue is heard.

The backlash against the media seems to stem from the public frustration with perceived media bias - FoxNews "Fair and Balanced" vs. CNN "MSM darling." It is hard to imagine that a truce could be negotiated between the MSM and the blogs when the forces seem so intent on combating each other.