“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.” – Oscar Wilde

Consider this “tradesman-like” nature of journalism, and assume that writers, in general, write on topics that the public want to read about. Relevance and urgency are what makes news what it is. When the Internet entered the equation, however, with its speed, convenience and ever-growing reach, news leapt from off the printed page to become more relevant and urgent online, leaving traditional journalism gasping for air.

Journalists behind major dailies and periodicals have taken heed of the trend, bringing broadsheet, tabloid, and magazine content online. The more visionary ones have put up blogs early on. Yet in the advent of the blogging age, when blogging tools have been made available to just about everyone, journalists are suddenly in competition with… well, everyone. On some occasions, newsworthy happenings are spread like wildfire by bloggers even before news editors hear about them. In some instances, the blogs are the news. When you think about how blogs are permeating the reading habits and overall consciousness of the public, then there is little wonder on how blogging is killing traditional journalism.

Think about it. On instances where an online newspaper allows readers to post comments on a news story, reading the comments on an online piece tends to be more interesting than the news item itself. That is when the read becomes meatier and maybe even more entertaining. On a blog where the writer has every freedom to express an opinion, and where comments are less stringently managed, the discussion becomes more entertaining and somewhat full-bodied, involving the reader more than ever before. Suffice it to say, the impersonal nature of traditional journalism is losing its readers to the more interactive and personal blog.

Those taking the side of traditional journalism may argue that its reliability and accuracy will insure its survival. But accuracy is not necessarily what blog readers are after; take the success of numerous gossip blogs, for instance. Yet more than the lure of gossip, readers are taking to perusing blogs to help them form an opinion, if not readily subscribe to those already presented by bloggers. Even the most discerning readers have a good chance of finding blogs written by the experts whose advice used to appear exclusively on periodicals. And the best part is getting it for the price of nothing more than a few mouse clicks.

Moreover, as technology has evolved to offer many ways to entertain rather than simply inform audiences, a quirky, upbeat blog, with any number of photos and the occasional embedded videos, may already have the upper hand over the straightforward, formal style characteristic of traditional journalism. The creative freedom alone opens up infinite options on ways to engage a curious reader.

The kind of advanced web tools readily available to bloggers are perhaps some of the most important advantage points of all. Some blogging sites enable bloggers to automatically send out alerts of their posts upon hitting the publish button, wasting no time at all in promoting the piece “hot of the press.”

Also, imagine a readership built on links strategically placed on other sites all over the Internet. While it may have taken years for leading publications to build a following, an interesting blog can easily match its circulation in unique hits in a matter of months. Newspapers and traditional media may be hard-pressed to find ways to market their stories as easily with traditional means, except, of course, when enlisting the help of bloggers.

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