FOXNews helps legitimise blogs

Yahoo reports in a press release that RealClearPolitics.com and FOXNews.com have announced a content partnership in which RealClearPolitics Opinion BuzzTracker will be re- directed to a newly designed and co-branded FOXNews.com page.

The press release states that:

The newly launched FOXNews.com page emerged from both organizations' recognition of the growing relevance of blogging in the world of politics and world news.

The launch of Opinion BuzzTracker on FOXNews.com represents the first time a mainstream media organization is offering its online consumers a vehicle that proxies and delivers blogged articles and commentary from all points of the political compass in a format that uniquely organizes and prioritizes content for the user.

The relevance of blogging is definitely growing, but what is happening, and what has been going on for quite a while, is that mainstream media are also contributing to this growth by reaching out to the blogosphere in an attempt to increase audience and maximise profit. What this ‘new’ relationship between mainstream media and blogs does is to help legitimise blogs as a source of information and that serves to make blogs more valuable as a marketing tool for political organisations. Blogs are becoming a springboard into mainstream media and can therefore not be neglected by political campaigns.

About BuzzTracker

Opinion BuzzTracker is an online tool that tracks ongoing conversations, news articles and analysis in over 5,000 politically-focused blogs and Web- based media resources, and then identifies and organizes the most linked to Internet stories on politics and political issues in the last 24 hours. The tool permits Internet users to easily filter through thousands of political news articles and blog conversations to determine the "wisdom of the crowds" in a continuously, updated format.