The AP reports:
Yahoo Inc.'s online news search tool on Monday added Internet journal entries as a supplement to professional media offerings — an experiment that figures to test the public's appetite for information from alternative sources....Yahoo's inclusion of blogs in its news section represents another validation for a growing group of people that are bypassing newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets to report and comment on topical events.
Although many top bloggers lack formal journalism training, it hasn't stopped them from building loyal readerships or breaking news that the mainstream media either missed or ignored.
Those scoops have helped rally more support for "citizen journalism" — a cause that Yahoo wanted to recognize by spotlighting some of the news appearing in blogs.
"The traditional media doesn't have the time or resources to cover all the stories going on," said Joff Redfern, a Yahoo product director.
But the blogging community, or "blogosphere," also is filled with rumors and inaccuracies. While the traditional media still faces the same problems, professional newsrooms ostensibly have more checks and balances to guard against incorrect or unsubstantiated information from being published.
It's interesting how the career journalist who wrote the piece, AP business writer Michael Liedtke, said that "professional newsrooms ostensibly have more checks" to guard against wrong information.
