A fight is generating in my house where News, Blogging, Opinions and Journalism meet. The bickering is among such powerful bloggers that Above The Fold feels like a child whose best move is to stay quiet. If you’re the type who thinks “professional bloggers” is an oxymoron, even a kid like ATF can tell you that you’re wrong. Most newsmaking bloggers are now former or current journalists who consider themselves to have ‘moved-up’ in the field. Reading their blogs is like stealing a glance at their raw notes and footage.

This being the case, not all of their blogs are completed; they’re more like hints at upcoming trends in news. This being the case, when a news blogger over-steps numbers and evidence to purport making news, other professional writer/journalists pounce at the perceived attack on their field from within. They have to; it’s self-defense and it’s better that they eat their own (Dan R)ather than being caught in an err from someone outside.

It starts with THIS VentureBeat.com article that states a one-month event as a concrete trend. That author was called to task by friend publicly in THIS AVC.blogs.com article politely and properly (albeit, publicly). That author’s ‘proper’ behavior included citing his own conflict of interests which is now a standard for ALL news organizations both large and small. That author was, today, beaten and dragged through the cyber-mud by THIS TechCrunch article. When a third-party comes to the defense of either side, it opens the doors for all varieties of others to jump in to the fray. Rational discussions about professional methods and standards do not stay rational for long.

What’s it mean? For those of us who keep a head in the news feeds and relish information coming from sources, it could wind up meaning yet another, finely-tuned standard is developed in the self-checking mechanism of journalism blogging. To get there, though, resembles some of the moves that were made prior to World War ONE where Archduke Ferdinand was shot. The floodgates that were opened could well begin an online melee not unlike World War Web where aliances and partnerships and professional courtesies take a back seat to sides and reputations. This will, of course, go largely unmentioned by televised news channels, but will probably result in a dramatic change in which news-through-blogs comes to you, the reader.

— Bryan Applegate