When I’m interested in a topic (or something breaking occurs), most often today it’s bloggers that break the news. Since I have both blogs and traditional media sources in my RSS reader, I can scan and skim over 1,000 articles per day and drill-down into information. It usually allows me to critically think about any given topic.

But where do I turn for well vetted, researched and hard news that I can trust? The traditional sites or blogs where I’m aware the blogger themselves are journalists (and yes, I critically think about their articles too!).

A friend of mine is the founder and chairman of Internet Broadcasting Systems and I’ve long admired how they connected on-the-ground reporting at TV news stations with online web site delivery and have some level of appreciation on what it takes to deliver world-class news. Joel Kramer, former publisher of the Minneapolis StarTribune whom I’ve talked with about what he’s about to reveal: a new high end news offering. As he states in this article about the blogosphere, “Some of the blogs are interesting, there’s a lot of it that’s not,” he said. “A lot of it is just pontificating, and I’m more interested in informed commentary as well as hard-hitting news gathering.“

Obviously I embrace blogging and love the multi-perspective reality that blogs bring to online news and information. I also concur with Kramer that much of it is blather — but blogs aren’t going away. If anything they’re becoming more influential. Traditional news media are laying off staff like mad as they try to stay profitable, so I wonder how long we’ll be able to continue to rely on ‘real’ journalism?

But it gets even more interesting as a blogger when I consider what it would take for me to truly report on just one story I’m personally interested in knowing more about right now.

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