LIVE! From Crawford, Texas! It's . . . .

. . . . first-person reporting from "blog documentarian" Andrew Marcus. (The picture on the left belongs to him. [No, not the guy in the picture, the picture itself.]) This is an interesting example of some of the things the blogosphere can do. There's no particular reason that the MSM can't do the same thing, but preoccupied as they are with being "professionals," and impressed with their own performance, "real" reporters often ignore their primary goal of telling us what the heck is going on by simply asking the same questions we'd ask if we were there. Add to this the requirement that they construct a "story" that will fit into the 45 seconds they've been allocated on the nightly news, and you've got very little in the way of basic fact being communicated. The entire current structure of news reporting is threatened by technology, including the internet, cheap digital cameras, easy-to-use audio and video editing software, and blogging software that even an idiot can use (you'll just have to trust me on this last).

Add this to the fact that I watched hurricane Katrina through a webcam on Bourbon Street this morning (until the storm killed it), and you have to wonder what the future holds.

Via Instapundit.