The 50 Media Sites Bloggers Link To The Most
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
As high on citizen journalism as I have been in the past, without the filter of trained journalists, it's essentially just noise. And blogs don't have the capital to put the resources on the ground that traditional media organizations are able to ... I fear that the whole system breaks down if newspapers and television media go under.
A million people with cell phone cameras is great, but not much of a fourth estate without trained, muckraking reporters. New media and old media feed off each other. I just hope one can adapt before the other sucks it dry.
What seems to give some blogs their break is when they actually report news, rather than just comment on other people's stories. Nothing beats breaking a story with real facts, and as you point out, it's hard to do without a trained staff.
I'm actually trying to push my own blog in the direction of reporting, but it's tough going it alone.
Also, #2 is NYT. NYT has some solid blogs, like the Freakonomics blog, and many of their better articles are not necessarily news - they are often op-ed pieces with facts sprinkled in.
My point being that I think the domains being linked to do provide some interesting discussion material, but I'd also wager that much of the content being linked to is more discussion in nature, rather than factual. I think that is also interesting in some ways - that we're moving away from news for news sake, and more towards opinions and analysis.