News/Blog. Different?

Sir Oliva told us to choose our favorite news website and news blog, and we have to compare (and possibly differentiate) the two. So here it is...

AS YOU CAN SEE. Advertisements follow you wherever you go!

Inquirer.net is my favorite news website. I would have chosen CNN.com or BBC.com, but content is more important to me than the layout itself. Inquirer.net is full of Filipino news we can see on today's or tomorrow's newspaper (as it is supposed to be), and it is much more applicable to my situation than the news CNN or BBC offers. Inquirer.net, however, is poorly layouted. A lot of advertisements are hanging on the sides, as is typical with most Filipino sites. That is mostly my complaint, the important information they give is being overshadowed and overpowered by the advertisements that float with you as you scroll (well done, advertiser friends...). There are also too many texts cramped together in a tight space which makes you feel frustrated when you search its content.

Inquirer.net, however, serves its function. It extends its newspaper online. Which makes it my favorite. What makes it different from mb.com.ph or interaksyon.com? Well, Inquirer is the number one newspaper for me. So it also is the number one news source for me on the internet.

Pretty biased, eh? Who cares? I don't. Up next, news blogs.

I must admit, I don't read news blogs nor have I taken any interest in finding one. However, since this is required, Google (no offense, sir) is my friend. I searched Google and there it is! Surprise, surprise... http://ph.omg.yahoo.com/blogs/omgphnewsblog/ showed up.

News? Blog? BLOG! It's all KC here.

I browsed through the blog posts of OMG. Obviously, these are your entertainment news blogs. What differs this from news websites is the nature of reporting. In one post (KC: I think I’m not the one Piolo needs in his life), the one-sided nature of the news blog is very obvious as the side of [baklang?] Piolo was never taken in this post. The layout is also much more attractive than traditional news websites - which don't focus on layout but rather content.The comments are also of note. What's striking about Yahoo is its very interactive community. The commentators tend to bash each other more here than in other website communities.

The lines of traditional news and blogging may be thinner now. After all, blogging still gets the message across. What's different is the discipline that traditional news offers. Bloggers run the risk of being unethical, as I was told. This does not exempt the bloggers from being ethical, though. In fact, I am inclined to think that they are more ethical than some journalists. News blogging is probably the next step in Journalism. It only needs a little more support (and probably monitoring) from traditional news followers.