How have blogs and the internet changed the way news is reported?

Blogs and the internet have changed the ways news has been reported by putting the information in the hands of the audience. In current times, the use of blogs has exploded and it has become more popular to the public. With the access of blogging, any average Joe could ‘report’ the news and have hundreds of people read it. That’s great because all of the authors could let their opinions be known unlike how things used to be with this technological advancement, but it gets to the point where because this information can be single sided parts of stories could be excluded, blown out of proportion or just interpreted the wrong way. Reporters are reporters for a reason and people are NOT reporters for a reason too. We should leave the ‘big stuff’ and news to the people who know what they’re doing. On the other hand, blogging could be a wonderful tool. Blogging and the internet help send information faster and is easiest to reach out to people. In political science my senior year of high school, I had a blogger come into our classroom and talk about all the risks he was taking informing people of the tragedies occurring overseas. This person had people (behind their governments back) sending graphic and horrendous pictures via websites and email that he would post on twitter for the world to see. This person is actually from Iran, I believe, and partly because of his actions he is literally banned from coming home. His father was a political prisoner and without all of his work people could not see what’s blatantly going on around the world in front of their own eyes.