Why we're better than bloggers

The speed at which today's news and pseudo-news moves makes it all a little difficult to sort what's credible and what's not, even for news junkies and people in the business.

Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, search engines all allow news and commentary posing as news to move more quickly than ever. It seems it's getting faster every day. What's lost however, is credibility or rather our ability to judge if something is credible.

Unfortunately, some news organizations that used to consider credibility before speed have now resorted to speed. They take some commentary, that could be a "possible fact" and more or less run with it. Publish it. Put it online.

For the news consumer, this means you're getting a lot more information, but you're probably more confused about what it means and if it can be trusted.

News organizations like The Free Press make it our goal to help with that understanding. While our writers and editors blog like everyone else, they are still part of our larger organization, and can face consequences if, through their blog, they're spreading information that is either blatantly false or seriously unreliable.

Our competitive advantage against bloggers and others who don't have people checking their content remains that we have professional journalists working for us, and yes, by and large they're better at discerning truth from B.S. than others. They don't have hidden agendas. They're transparent. You can find them at a real office with a real phone number.

But we find ourselves constantly defending our profession as main stream media. As an organization, we all have different views and can keep our journalistic activities in check because we engage regularly in self criticism. We even take criticism from outside our walls and publish it in our product. They're called letters to the editor.

Last time I checked, bloggers and talk radio show hosts with large web site followings did not have a daily method and an ethical rule for publishing criticism of themselves. They don't have regular discussions among staff if they're doing the right thing.

That's why news organizations are more credible, and until these other media out there can show the public they have checks and balances and willingly accept criticism, we will have the competitive advantage, maybe not always in speed, but the thing that matters more: credibility.