Environmentally Friendly Blogs: The Cons

Earlier in the day I wrote about the pros of a blog and now it is time to talk about the other side – the cons. One of the biggest downsides of blogs is the chance that you can see the same information and links on many different sites. As a result you can see a lot of recycled information. Recycling is good for the environment but not for blogging.
A successful blog thrives on new information that is constantly updated, not on information that is old and recycled from another blogger’s post. One of the greatest advantages of blogging is the opportunity to express fresh, unique ideas, and not taking advantage of that is only detrimental to your blog.
The credibility of blogs is also another question that can bring doubt to the legitimacy of blogs.
There was much discussion this week between classmates that questioned the credibility of blogs, mainly pointing at the fact that there isn’t a system of checks-and-balances for blogs.
In many cases blogs are produced by citizen journalists with little or no formal journalism training so fact checking and reliable sources aren’t a topic of discussion. The downside of this is that bloggers will rant on about certain topics with no factually or credible basis for their opinions. But is that really such a bad thing? Take a look at mainstream media and you’ll see that majority of news shows are talk based and as a result the line between fact and fiction is severely blurred. So how is that different from a blogger going off about a topic? There really isn’t a difference except the professionals are already in position of authority while citizen journalists are just regular people.
I think the raw, agenda-less writing of citizen journalists can be seen as a negative, but can also be a positive because they are speaking what they really feel and not speaking to please a segment of the population or to build ratings. Citizen journalists don’t have to worry about ratings or playing politics – they just play it real.