The art and craft of journalism is at a crossroad; as the fast paced world of technology continues to develop it leaves many questions unanswered. Reporting and the speed in which the public finds out about information are nearly continuous. As the Internet grew into a rapid way to exchange information and ideas, readers quickly adapted to this new form. Typical news sources switched from standard press to the World Wide Web and the blogosphere was created.

My father is an information addict, for as far as I can remember he has worshipped The New York Times every morning, the idea and tangibility has always been something he in fond of. As technology continues to take over print news is in serious decline, many may ask what exactly the difference between these two forms is. Besides the tangibility that a physical paper has to offer, the internet allows any user, anywhere at any time to post anything they want; the personal aspect that the internet creates is unreal—allowing every user to be a part of it. As I examine the Huffington Post—one of the top rated blogs on the internet I found a number of things, it shared the common stories that a typical news site or paper would offer (today’s hot button issue was the probability that Chicago mayor Richard Daley is not running for re-election) as I compared the Huffington Post to other major online news sources I began to see what made it so special (and popular). Traditional online news sources act as digital newspapers because in essence that’s exactly what they are. The Huffington Post is a culmination of a traditional news source that allows its users to not only interact with the story—but with other users and the author. By doing this it creates one of the most informative blogs and news engines on the web.

News stories constantly break and traditional news sources cover them as similar to actual press as they used too, its core difference though is the speed in which everything happens. A journalist now has to work harder and faster to find the core of a story, as the demand for rapid information is so great on the World Wide Web that consumers of information crave stories as they happen. The blogosphere creates a culmination of information and readers opinion. Traditional blogs allow the reader to consume the information that they find to be valuable. It almost forces us to be active readers, instead of annotating and marking the text that we read; we now can consume it and regurgitate it to those who actively read similar information.

As technology reigns supreme, I ponder if this is a good thing or a bad thing, there is so much information available to anyone who wants to work hard enough to find it. Traditional online news sources are great at alerting you instant news—allowing you to find out information about story’s as they develop. Never before could news and information be spread like this, and because of that a number of things can (or will) (or might) happen. The end to traditional reporting is near, or at the least some changes will happen. Physical news print and papers are on their dyeing breath and this really can scare a lot of people, but from how I understand things is that for every change that is made, a fresh start is as well. New and improved ways of getting information professionally and on the amateur level will be easier than ever before. The time of the information is now.