How does blogging influence the style and content of newspaper stories?
MW: The casual tone and approach of blogs has made newspaper style less stiff and formulaic because readers have become accustomed to a less formal top-down approach to their news. This can be a good thing. While some blogs are merely outlets for rants and personal attacks, or what I call “blog-bys,” the conversational approach embraced on blogs has forced newspapers to make the writing style more casual and less focused on “the spokesman said Thursday” kind of news. Blogs are based on opinion and the individual stories of everyday citizens. Bloggers demand their voices be heard and newspapers want to be more inclusive of these unofficial voices. Why do you think our culture reveres the individual stories of ordinary people? MW: The signs of this reverence are everywhere. From reality TV shows to product websites soliciting posts of comments from users about their own stories, real stories of real people saturate the media landscape. It can be a confluence of events that contribute to
