Blogs, Not Press, Feature Gay Marriage Story

I tend to agree with the angst about the decline of traditional newspapers, as it's clear from reading online news sources that most of the real "news" is still generated by the traditional press, while the blogsphere is limited to commentary. Yet this report from the Pew Research Center makes an important point--the editorial decisions made by online news sources often differ substantially from traditional news, which devoted relatively little coverage to the expansion of equal marriage rights in the last few weeks. While it's easy to argue that online news focuses too much on the demands of interest groups, since those inclined to engage in (usually unpaid) Internet journalism are likely to motivated by an agenda, it's hard to contend that mainstream media is more relevant--witness the attention paid to the recent story of pirate hijackings, which was objectively a fairly minor incident in the grand scheme of things. In any case, the elimination of traditional editorial barriers in online media is certainly one of the medium's strengths.