While some journalists continue to crank out columns decrying the rise of blogs, the Project for Excellence in Journalism sees them as a new but entrenched part of the media landscape. In its recently released “The State of the News Media 2005,” the Project suggests that the news media has shifted its focus from verifying facts to going to press with little or no verification. Consequently, while the need for truth has grown, truth has become harder to identify.

Blogs represent part of one of the major trends listed in the study: “There are now several models of journalism, and the trajectory increasingly is toward those that are faster, looser, and cheaper.” (Other trends include partisanship in news consumption, cautious investment by mainstream media in building new audiences, and the evolution of the three major news networks.)

The speed with which blogs communicate information—often unverified—is one cause of the shift, according to the report. Or, it could be that blogs have risen as a response to the difficulty readers have in determining what is true. In any case, “The State of the News Media” gives a fair amount of space to blogs, noting that people read them primarily to get news faster and to get additional perspective.

For now, blogs are largely an echo chamber and commentary channel, rather than a “news” source. Every so often a critical mass of blog chatter or a really newsworthy fact will emerge from the blogosphere, but their impact on the traditional media dialogue is still occasional. Instead, the overall impact of blogs flows in other directions.

These include…

• Ease of publishing, adding new voices to the commons
• Complicating life for credentialed, mainstream journalists
• The ability to keep a story alive
• The availability of measurement tools that make it easy to conduct “an almost daily tracking ‘poll’ on our culture”

The study also points to the increasing number of blogs written by editors and reporters that are becoming part of many newspapers’ Web sites.

Writing about the study, Ventura Star deputy opinion page editor Richard Larsen suggests that blogging doesn’t spell the end to mainstream journalism. Instead, it presents new challenges and opportunities. First, there’s the need to remain vigilant of inaccuracies that spread through the blogosphere (Larsen cites assertions that Republicans fixed the 2004 presidential election in Ohio). Second, there’s the challenge to remain credible. As the study says, “To adapt, journalism may have to move in the direction of making its work more transparent, more expert, and of widening the scope of its search light.”