About news blogs

News blogs come in every stripe and color imaginable. On the surface, a news blog is just what it sounds like: a blog that disseminates news. Where it gets tricky is that the "news" being disseminated can be on traditional news topics such as current events, science, and technology, for example. Or the "news" can be about the "dumbest, coolest, craziest" stuff on the Internet as the 13gb.com news blog proclaims. Or the news can be about the goings on at a particular company. For a list of more than 500 news blogs, visit BlogCatalog.com.

Starting a news blog

In the strictest sense of the word any can--and many people do--start a news blog. Some of them are great, and some of them are bunk. Lots of people in North America have been waiting for the MSN blog service known as MSN Spaces to launch. The beta version of MSN Space now available to North American users. MSN blogging using Spaces allows users to set up blogs, post photos, keep favorites lists, get feedback from other bloggers, and link to other MSN Spaces blogs. This blog service can be used to set up blogs of any type, including news blogs. News blogs set up by individuals that include content on current events is considered a form of citizen journalism. One example of such a blog are the many blogs set up by Iraqi citizens since the onset of conflicts in that region. Many people in the areas affected by the recent Indian Ocean tsunami also set up news blogs to share stories, pictures, and even video of the devastation there.

Popular news blogs

Depending on your particular interests, news blogs are ripe for the picking. Some popular news blogs include BuzzWebster, which is dedicated to covering news on the intersection of politics and the Internet; Political-News.org offers breaking news on politics and elections from around the world; Rawstory.com offers news of interest to the 18-31 demographic. For a wide-ranging list of news blogs, visit BlogCatalog.com and click on News.

News blog directory

News blog directories abound with more springing up every day. Two reliable news blog directories that are updated regularly are Worldmagblog.com and BlogCatalog.com. Worldmagblog.com is itself a news blog, and it includes a sidebar with links to hundreds of other news sites most of which offer their own news blog. BlogCatalog.com is a plain old directory of blogs broken out by categories of interest. The news blog category includes links to more than 500 news blogs as well as a brief description of each so you can decide whether a blog might be of interest to you or not.

News blog credibility

Are news blogs credible? That's an issue that has been and will continue to be debated for some time to come. Just like any information you find on the Internet, you need to consider the source. Just as there are many flaky bloggers out there, so to are there many legitimate news blogs available. More and more, legitimate news blogs are coming to influence how the mainstream media covers the important stories of the day. For more information on news blogs, citizen journalism, and their impact on mainstream media, visit Poynter.org.