The line between professional and grassroots journalism continues to become more gray with the move by Yahoo yesterday (10/11/05) to include blog sources in its News results. With the official release of the Yahoo Blog Search, the News search results are now offering blog search results in the right rail. So there are still boundaries on the results page that help distinguish media and blog sources but the fact that they are now on the same page is a huge stride for bloggers. This integration is very interesting though, since it is another step closer to the general public acknowledging the blogosphere voice and strong influence with it's over 100 million blogs. While there is still opposition to bloggers being part of the definition of journalism as mentioned in this post on The Blog Herald. However, Buzzmachine contests that journalism is an act and not a person. So who is right?
I think it is a smart move by Yahoo to make the blogosphere more mainstream since I feel the blogosphere in many cases reports trends more quickly then the professional media. For example, last week the blogosphere buzzed about Ning the newly released social application platform. I am willing to bet not too many professional journalism outlets picked up the Ning release buzz that I blogged about on Somewhat Frank. That is just one recent example and there is probably one example like this every week in the blogosphere. So I think it is crucial that these sources be recognized for latest trends and news, so I applaud Yahoo's efforts.
For more blogosphere coverage of the move by Yahoo to add blogs to the news check out the posts on Niall Kennedy's Weblog, Search Engine Guide, Technoogle, Atul's Blog, and NewsBusters.org.
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