http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/03/29/bloggers-in-the-locker-room-its-the-pros-vs-the-joes/

For Kid Nate from the article

"On the net, the most popular sports bloggers do the exact same thing. They troll the net looking for other people's work and then throw out some witty comments or a simple rant to complement a link to that work.. Or they sit in front of the TV and throw out posts/comments about the game."

 For Luke from the article:

"The people who have complained and dismissed the blogger ban the loudest are those that have the most to lose. They are the ones getting paid. If the unwashed blogging masses have some masters among them, who knows what could happen to the balance of power in the sports media world."

I have also noticed that they are also starting to take to much material.  I've seen some bloggers repeat almost entire articles instead of just valid points and add only one sentence as commentary and pass it off as a post.  If they plagarize almost an entire article there really isn't to much reason for the reader to ever go back and read the original author's work.  

While bloggers do contribute news, I mostly read them for opinion, fully realizing that anybody can have one.  Some are good and some are crap.  Luke is good at what he does, which is why I keep coming back.  

So instead of having a report that says, "85% of Americans are uncomfortable with abortion but okay with the status quo," which would be the truth, we get to hear whack-jobs from the 7.5% on both sides with views so extreme that you're not sure if even they believe what they're talking about.

A good example of this was the 2004 election. I'm not going to get too political here (because it happens on both sides - this is just the best example I have), but what was interesting to me was a graph I saw in 2005 that showed the percentage of people who believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It peaked before the start of the war, then sank quickly, but started rising again by the 2004 election. How is that possible? I mean, there were no WMDs found in Iraq, so why would growing numbers of people think there were? The only explanation I can see is that the MSM just let people say, "Oh yes there were!" without calling them on it.

Blogs have taken over the role of providing news with commentary. Because they so rarely answer to corporate masters, they can say, "Person X said this, but he's full of shit," when he's full of shit. The MSM is worried that person X won't give them an interview again, or that person X will use his connections to damage them in some way.

MMA Blogs are actually a good example of this. Most of the sites screw around a lot, but they're interested in giving the news with the kind of commentary that lets you see the truth. Instead of just reporting what somebody at DREAM said, Fightlinker will go back and say, "but that's complete bullshit, and here's why."

But if people are saying that "Oh, you can't trust blogs," because some blogs are full of shit, then they're giving the impression that you can blindly trust the MSM, which is just as stupid. I'd say that because of the differences in format, it's harder to tell if a newspaper is reliable or has an axe to grind. They all look the same, whereas if you see a shitty blog full of broken image links and lousy spelling, you can pretty quickly decide: these guys are idiots.

But how does an unsuspecting reader know the difference between the Washington Post and the Washington Times? One is a respected newspaper with enough awards to sink a good-sized yacht, and the other is a partisan effort by a crazed religious leader to spread his insane views and poison the political landscape. I don't even know any well-informed conservatives who will read that crap. But it sure looks just as official.

Anyway: Blogs, some good, some bad, but at least you can expect some honesty. Newspapers: beholden to corporate masters and better at hiding their biases. Blech.