Being A Virtual Reporter

• You went to journalism school
• It was your hope to be 'discovered' by a good newspaper/media outlet
• The wire was the place to catch a scoop
• You had a boss (the editor)
• Fighting censorhip was your passion
• Television was "the new media"
• There were 'rules' to how to report information and concepts such as integrity
• If you had an opinion you wrote a letter to the editor and hoped it would appear in the next edition

• Anyone can start his/her own blog
• You hope to get discovered by search engines like Google

• Scopes are via RSS feeds and sites like Digg, and StumbleUpon.
• You work for yourself, do your own marketing, have to find your own advertisers, and hope to make a little money at it

• Anyone can say pretty much whatever they want, regardless of who wants to hear it

• You upload your video to YouTube to gain attention and popularity

• All that matters is popularity, getting people to read your musings and watch your videos..at whatever cost.

• Others feedback is immediatly made available to you via comment feeds. So you get to know everyone's opinions immediatly.

Today, anyone can setup and own a blog in a few minutes. Blogs are not just limited to news articles, but contain people's thoughts, ideas and opinions. These virtual reporters are everywhere, attending coferences, tradeshows, repoting on the latest trends in news, entertainment, and fashion.

Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, "The medium is the message", and it causes me to pause and wonder. If the media itself affects the society and not the content, it is clear to me that this new media and new medium will have a dramatic effect on society. The question we might want to ask ourselves..Will it be a world for better or worse?