To attend this one, all you need is a keyboard, a monitor and an interested mind. That’s right, this party has no limits, anyone can show up, report and discuss at anytime, anywhere. Its grassroots journalism and it’s taking over the Web.

But, like most parties, what exactly are the consequences of this novel form of “knowledge celebration” on our society?

There was a time not so long ago where participation in the media industry was limited to a one way street. Media corporations reported what they considered the most important news to the public with very little interaction. Yes, Americans could discuss news amongst each other, but other than reporters and news conglomerates, individuals really had no say in what constituted news.

This worked well for many years, until the Web brought the invention of the blog, a place where news could be broken by real people and where these same people could interact in real time.

So began the great global knowledge sharing party.

Perhaps one of the country’s first and most important effects of this came during the Bill Clinton years. Though a large news source did eventually report the news, it was The Drudge Report, a blog, which broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

From here, the party only got better. O’Reilly discusses both the fall of Joe Nacchio of Qwest and of September 11 as vital events in Web logging. Information from big news sources began in the blogs, and people could discuss news in real time.

The Blogosphere, in a sense, became a modern form of muckraking- with a little less negative connotation. Though, muckrakers of early American history physically dug up information, bloggers of today’s age log in to their e-mail boxes, write up a story and post.

Now, instead of receiving their news from large conglomerate news sources, citizens are the sources, they decide what is news and which important issues should be talked about.

The question now becomes whether these “novel muckraker citizens” are really journalists or if they are just the ones who no one really wants at the party.

In all actuality, however, citizen bloggers may actually make the best journalists. They are taking time to write about issues they truly care about and what affects theirs – and most of Americans’- daily lives.

The inclusively of the Blogosphere, the great global knowledge sharing party, allows journalism to climb from the citizen to the news conglomerate rather than from the news conglomerate to the citizen.

Discussion Questions:

Why would losing the aspect of physical reporting be a positive or negative in modern media?

How can we, as information seekers, ensure credible sources from the Web?