Is it news or opinion/voice? Bloggers aren’t professional journalists to be sure, but there’s something very satisfying in getting the “other” story. If you’ve been at an event and then watched it on the nightly news, it becomes obvious why this is so important to nurture. I think the BBC is on the right track with their announcement of revamping their site to include reader content. Spending even a small amount of time in the blogosphere helps you get quickly oriented to who’s who, what’s legitimate and what isn’t. Sure students need to somehow learn how to decipher all this; but the paradigm has changed and is changing. Legitimate sources exist now that are found only on the web. We know too that history books are neither “objective” nor unbiased. True though that some person’s opinions I could give a hoot about and so too their blogs. But I want the choice. Like the choice I have to get my “news” from outside the US.