Blogging the new investigative reporting?

Will Bunch's article, "A Landmark for Bloggers -- and the Future of Journalism" discusses Josh Marshall winning the George Polk award last year. Bunch credits Marshall's online blogging that led to his website Talking Points Memo.

"Hopefully, this acknowledgment of what one savvy blogger and his team have accomplished is a milestone that will speed the day when mainstream journalists realize that the best kind of blogger like Marshall is truly one of our own kind, using new tools and a new way of thinking to break a news story that otherwise might have not been discovered."

Bunch says the Internet is a new avenue for reporting and helps to expand and improve investigative journalism. Talking Points Memo picked up stories that were only lightly covered by the mainstream media and broke through some important corruption in the government.

One point Bunch made that I think really stood out is that mainstream media needs to embrace these new forms of journalism. Currently, blogging is being put down as a sloppy form of reporting and that these people do not know what they are doing. It is important to be skeptical of blogging, just like it is to be for newspapers. Blogging does not ensure honest, unbiased reporting but it does create a new avenue and expand journalists' capabilities. I think it is important for the news media today to accept these new forms of reporting and help to make them better, instead of ignoring them.