Media Websites and Weblogs: Abroad and Local

Is this an article or weblog entry? Is it just semantics or a more important question? Some would say that the inherent nature of a blog, often individualist, undirected, and indulgent, leads them to being inferior or more prone to error than the more structured and guided means of publishing.

Free of editorial constraints and deadlines, however, blogs allow for immediacy that is missing with publications and websites that have deadlines, schedules and printing constraints. Some publications and journalists have embraced the medium's better qualities and used them to augment their more traditional methods. The Spokesman Review has added a blog to its website, Ask The Editors. The blog gives both readers and editors a venue to question and clarify without intruding on the format of the print version of the paper. And every answer has the name of the editor who provided the response.

It is the ego-bruising nature of corrections and retractions that may keep some publications from acknowledging past errors in articles. It is this subject that the Village Voice tackles in its Department of Corrections article. It talks about various publications and the use of their websites as a means of providing a place to make amends for mistakes. Or just ignore that they were made in the first place. Move along, nothing to read here folks.

Wired Magazine discusses the effect of adopting a reporter and blogging about their every utterance. Tim Withers has taken New York Times' political reporter Jodi Wilgoren as his journalist of choice in The Wilgoren Watch and critiques errors and bias as they appear. It is pretty evident that Withers takes issue with most any truly, or perceived, negative reported in Democratic presidental candidate Howard Dean.

Locally, the Las Vegas Media Site takes a similar tack, but more broadly. Using the internet as his podium, Jeremy Parker responds to just about anything he deems worthy of comment. See the "Weblog to Check Out" paragraph in the Las Vegas Weekly article for another review of his site. Additionally, the prolific writer has two other sites, Twenty-Four Frames Per Second and Las Vegas Weblog.

In Vegas both Rick Henderson and Mike Zigler have blogs that occasionally refer to or elaborate on articles they have writen for the Review Journal, Las Vegas City Life, and the Las Vegas Business Press.