Claim: The emergence of the online “blogosphere” and social media has significantly weakened the quality of political discourse in the United States.

Reason: When anyone can publish political opinions easily, standards for covering news and political topics will inevitably decline. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which that claim is based.

Proponents of paper journalism claim that the burgeoning of online portals and macro blogging has weakened the quality of journalism in the country. However on weighing the evidence on both sides it can be aver that the recent journalism revolution has contributed towards increased quality of the news content in the readership.

With the advent of the world wide web and disruption caused by social media, there has been a revolution in the field of journalism and it has been for good. First and foremost journalism is like any other industry and is competitive in nature. Viewers and readers are always in for good editing and are content savvy. The increasing number of self published news and media portals leads to distribution of readership among established media houses and independent players. This results in healthy competition for the viewership. This has raised demand for the better news content to which the media houses are responding. This is also evident in the foray of news reading as the online content of New York Time , New Yorker and Scientific American are preferred over those of others.

The emergence of online media has not only increased the competitiveness for the readership but has also straightened the bias of the news and has promoted fact based news. It is often reported that many news agencies are being funded by corporate houses sometimes tend to be spokes houses of their sponsors rather than being dispassionate speakers of the news. However there has been a paradigm shift in the trend from previous year as the news nowadays is more diaphanous than ever. The independence granted by the online blogging portals renders multitude of perspective on the same content. This not only allows for the content to be less biased but also uncovers different sides of the story. A quantitative comparison of reading tones of publications of different news agencies illustrates the degree to which news is true representative of the fact.

The implications of the online media portals reach far and beyond the content and the quality. As said earlier the news and journalism is an industry like any other. The deluge of free news portals and blogs has increased the landscape of readership leading to a decrease in sale prices of premium news content. As an after effect of capitalism this is beneficial to the customer as it channels the access to quality content to many readers at a cheaper price.

Although there has been a substantial increase in the online blogosphere rendering common man with the power to publish with the click of a button, it has evidently done greater good to the industry and the readers.Clearly the advent of media portals and social media has increase the domain of canonical news reporting. If anything it has not only improve the readership and has made the news available to the nook and corners of the society , something which is the fundamental to journalism.