News machine outfoxed by bloggers - Opinion - www.smh.com.au

News machine outfoxed by bloggers - Opinion - www.smh.com.au: "Last month, the Boston affiliate of America's Fox TV network ran a news item about a new craze sweeping cyber space. It turns out that all over America young people are creating websites full of information about their daily lives.
Or, as Fox's breathless reporter put it, 'to catalogue the details of their lives on web pages created for them, by them ... just blah-blah-blogging'.
Incredible. I wonder what burgeoning technological trend Rupert Murdoch's news machine will uncover next? Mobile tar-tar-telephony? The rah-rah-radio? Far-far-fire? The devil may have the best tunes but it'll be a long time before he works out how to upload them to his aye-aye-iPod.
Fortunately in most other sections of the media, attitudes towards blogging - and online journalism in general - couldn't be more different. Not only are news organisations rolling out blogs of their own, but in the past year the influence of bloggers over their print, television and radio counterparts has grown massively.

Consider a decision made by organisers of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Boston next month. So keen are they to get their message through to the people of Blogistan that for the first time they have issued press accreditation to political bloggers.

Blah-blah-blogging may be just a craze to Fox, but to almost everyone else it's a terrifyingly powerful influence on what the media say and how they say it. And it's an influence that the world's talk radio hosts ignore at their peril."