In class this week we had another great guest speaker come and talk to us about a new wave of online news that has come onto the scene. Our speaker, Barry Parr, came and spoke with us about hyper-local news sites and introduced to the site he created called Coastsider. He created this site because he realized there was a lack of news coverage in his town and he felt that he could do something about it by writing his own stories and creating his own online news site for the community of Half Moon Bay, California.
In addition to informing us about all the interesting aspects of hyper-local news, Parr talked about news blogs in general. Like myself, Parr discussed how blogs are becoming more and more of a news source for people around the country. While this may seem relatively harmless, bloggers are not always forced to stand up to scrutiny like their fellow journalists are. They do not face the repercussions of reporting misinformation like true journalists do because there jobs do not necessarily depend on reporting accurate, fair, and balanced news. With that being said, Parr explained how as a blogger its important to take the job seriously and ALWAYS disclose a conflict of interest. By doing so, you are showing the readers that not only are you a fair reporter but you are showing them what possible biases you may have regading the subject so that they can make a judgement call themselves.
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