In the first iteration of the Don Middleberg-Steven Ross “Media in Cyberspace” study several years ago, reporters and editors said they used newsgroups (message board, bulletin boards, forums) for story fodder. Most often they visited the boards for information about a story they were already covering, but some trolled message boards looking for story ideas.

Heath Row from FastCompany magazine (the guy behind the magazine’s blog—the first blog in a business magazine—says he finds blogs to be useful for finding story ideas today. He also says that blogs provide him the opportunity to write about topics that don’t meet the requirements for full-blown articles for the print magazine.

Row also notes that some 45 people contribute these days to the FCNow blog, including Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble. As a journalist, Row’s embracing of blogs stands in stark contrast to Kevin Maney’s rather lame and clueless column in USA Today, suggesting that blogging is nothing new; he claims Thomas Paine was a blogger.

As a huge fan of American Revolutionary history, I always though Paine was a pamphleteer. Readers couldn’t comment or link to him or elevate his profile in a community. Certainly there are parallels, but blogs have characteristics that are unique to the technology that enables it. Further, the social evolution of blogging is also new.

So there are two kinds of journalists in this regard—those who embrace the blogosphere and those who dismiss it. Where it will lead is anybody’s guess, but I’d put my money on a symbiotic relationship between bloggers and journalism.