This week was my first time ever spending any amount of time scrolling through and reading different blogs. As I am very new to the blogging community and internet news in general, I’m unsure if just a few days of reading can come to anything but speculation. However, it seems to me that blogs offer a closer reading of a story and a more descriptive depiction of a situation. I much prefer this to a vague brush through of an even frequently given by newspapers. I appreciate that blogs also have this aspect of transparency to the side they’re taking. A newspaper claims to have no bias or special interest in mind when publishing a story; to me this is entirely contradictory to my observations on our nature as humans. Each person, and maybe each writer especially, regardless of how neutral he or she strives to be, holds some preconceived notions and formulates opinion based ideas on any particular subject. Bloggers are not usually obligated to abide by any objectivity rules, and I think that this is a main reason for the success of blogs. They can provide a reader with a very honest response, allowing the reader to perhaps trust the content of the article more due to its obvious bias.

The New York Times and The Guardian both wrote cover stories on 9/11. I found them to be disappointingly similar; both articles focus on the tension between American and Muslim groups in New York still present today and paid less attention to the ceremony or actual significance of this day. The quotes I also found to be excessively shortened and kind of thrown into the article rather than adding to the content. Both of these paper’s article on 9/11 I found to be slightly ironic. They both suggest that the remembrance of the attacks were overshadowed by the controversy caused by the potential mosque, yet proceed to write their entire article on that controversy and pay little attention to the ceremony or significance of this day. This is my issue with journalism: If the issue here is that 9/11 is becoming overshadowed by political debate over the similar sentiments that caused 9/11, then why do the people writing the news prolong this by making this tension the news? The New York Times includes a quote from a solider who states that he is there to defend the first amendment- for me, this is news and this should be the primary tone and focus point of the article. I am drawn toward blogging because the journalist there does not have to write about ‘the news’ but rather can write about whatever he or she considers to be news. I think possibly that less modern forms of journalism, such as newspaper, have taken the beauty of what it is to be a journalist. The journalist has so much potential, to be the one writing the information that thousands of people respect to be important information is a beautiful thing, and should consist of more than the observations of people protesting and six word sentence quotes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/nyregion/12sept11.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/11/911-commemorations-tensions-islamic-centre

To my pleasant surprise, not all of the blogs covered this day. The blog that I read that did cover this day was politico.com, and I was much more impressed by this article than the other to by a long shot. I liked the lede and writing style of the blog politico, as well as the use of pictures and article titles. It focused on the president’s attempt to ‘cool passions’ and describes actual situation, with longer more descript quotes and better commentary. The beginning of the article has the most important and, in my opinion, the necessary details on the issue at hand before the silly business that they probably feel obligated to add, as it is still related. It is also three pages, which I find to be an appropriate length for such a heavy topic and gives the writer enough space to cover several sides well.

o http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42009.html