The Blogosphere. A world of media born of the internet, filled with the great, the true, the silly, the false, the irrelevant, and the valuable. Why do I choose this media?

Well, the traditional main-stream media, the reporters of news and information used to be the only real means of gaining current information. Newspapers, Radio, TV, etc. The major providers of news like The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, NBC, ABC, CBS, and various other portals have massive resources at their disposal. We have depended on these sources to help us keep an eye on our leaders. That is not all they do, they inform us of other things as well, current events, both global and local, things done by people, by nature, the comings and goings of humanity, etc. The expectation is that these portals report facts, that they provide information as completely and comprehensively as possible, and with as little bias as possible.

Sometimes, we seek opinion, and such demand is filled by commentators: People like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Larry King, Chris Matthews, etc. help to fill this demand. We do not expect a lack of bias, we want an interpretation and explanation of news. We want to know where these people, whose opinions we respect and whose voice is entertaining enough to hold our interest, think that our leaders are taking us, where our society is headed. They too have many resources, and they use them to research facts and to derive conclusions, a task that many of us do not have the time and resources for.

The blogosphere is another story, a place where we can voice our own opinions and facts, and put our own perspectives out there. More importantly, it is a place where we can interact with the main voice. Instead of listening to a broadcast and talking to ourselves about it (or yelling at the radio in the car like I do), we can actually put in our own two cents, and temper what is said with our perspectives and knowledge. Conversely, those of us who author the content can defend our position directly, or learn from our mistakes when it is shown that we made them.

The first group has let us down in many cases. With the resources they have, they could command more credibility by far than the rest of the media. They have the money and connections to go to places and see first hand what is happening. They have the resources to check facts and make sure they are true. They have the staff to research and see if history shows patterns that grant credibility to the perceived paths we are on. Too often, they do not use these things, or they misuse them. Too often they focus on news that is irrelevant and not on that which must be known. Too often they focus on entertaining and shocking rather than informing and instructing.

The second group is similar. They often have more credibility, if only because they admit their bias freely. They admit they are entertaining, they admit they are commentating. They admit that their reporting is their perspective. Even supposedly purely entertaining commentary like Jon Stewart often have more credibility than the major news sources. This is the reason for their success, not the fact that they are entertaining as the major news sources seem to think. Too often, however, these portals have a perspective we disagree with, or they focus too much on things we aren’t interested in. And in some cases, we find that their conclusions are false, despite the resources that they have to check facts and conclusions and history.

So, those of us who wish to convey a different message, be it opinion or fact, turn to the blog. The blogosphere is a collection of millions of ideas, perspectives, facts, falsehoods, lies, opinions, and spam. Its credibility is easy to question. Most bloggers do not have any particular qualifications and usually have limited resources, hence their use of a blog instead of a radio station or newspaper. They don’t have a staff of people, and they don’t have the ability to do the same level of fact checking that the other news portals could be doing. They do, however, have two things going for them:
1) Bloggers generally open up their comments for scrutiny by all. This means that if they messed up, they will be called out on it. Thus, when sifting through a blog post, one can often see the truth in a statement after it has been poked and prodded by the audience.
2) Quite often, blog authors end up being right. They end up having greater accuracy in both fact and prediction than their main stream media counterparts. If the main stream media wants to be considered credible, they will have to be right more often. Blogs have won their credibility over time.

I do not have great resources or a great deal of time. But I have a message I want communicated that I see too little of. Also, I enjoy being the author of opinion and I like talking about my philosophy. I prefer to do so in a conversation form, where I can gain feedback and learn. I love to learn, and as a great man once said: “If you want to learn a lot about something, write about it.” So, I blog. I hope that this blog becomes one of the good ones with some credibility, rather than one of the ones that is sorted through and discarded as useless.

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