Blogging: A Sign Of Death of Newspapers?

It cannot be denied that newspapers are now declining in the circulation. Less people are now reading newspapers since the world of internet existed. Internet gives a lot of services to the users and it fits to the attitude of the youth, who is the most numbered users of internet. Internet do not bore the youth while newspapers do. One of the services that internet offers is the capability of the users to publish what they want to say or what they want to inform. This service is called "blogging".

Blogging is the way to express opinions, inform, and educate people. Through blogging, there are lots of news stories posted by bloggers, and not only by journalists. According to Rolando Fernandez, professor of College of Arts and Communication in University of the Philippines Baguio and the Editor-in-Chief of Inquirer Northern Luzon, journalists get some tips of news stories from many different bloggers. Most often, bloggers posted news articles faster than the journalists. In some ways, bloggers are also performing the work of real journalists.

Professor Fernandez said that many practitioners have their own blogs because of the advantages they can get from it. He said that through blogs, journalists can write the whole story of their news reports even if it has been prohibited from publishing in newspapers. He added that practitioners can also elaborate and write behind the scenes of Malacañang through blogging because of less restrictions in using the internet

Blogging brings many changes to the world of journalism. Because of blogging, different information are more accessible and updated than in newspapers. Blogging also lessen the works of journalists. According to Professor Fernandez, a reporter can be a writer, an editor and a publisher at the same time. He also said that because of blogging, an office can be somewhere else even only in the room. With that, less work is done by the practitioners.

Even if blogging is more advantaged than newspaper in disseminating information, Professor Fernandez said that blogging is more of help to journalism and it should not be seen as a threat to the profession. He cleared that newspapers will survive for still a long time despite of its crisis situation right now, which is the declination of its subscriptions.