Are Blogs Killing Journalism?

If, like me, you subscribe to several feeds from separate blogs as well as aggregators, that collect blog feeds either by topic or region, you may notice certain trends. For example, last Sunday night Damien Mulley announced the opening of votes for the Irish blog awards online. Although the press picked up on the story over the following days, the "blogosphere" had already covered it in depth within a couple of short hours of his announcement. The blog awards would naturally be of interest to bloggers, but what of other stories? What about events in areas where traditional media have limited presence or resources to provide coverage? With the incorporation of blogs in the search results on some of the main news websites the difference between bloggers and journalists is becoming increasingly blurred. While a "net savvy" user may be able to tell the difference between an authorative and reliable source and one that is totally unreliable a casual browser probably cannot.