But proper in-depth research and analysis takes time. Arguably news organisations have the resources but their journalists don’t have the time and the reverse might be true of some but not all bloggers - although many obviously have jobs and what have you.

I think the argument about there not being any journalists who look for news is not accurate. On alot of the dailies about 75% of their content is basically recycled press releases. But there are exceptions.

As someone writing for the business section of a Sunday newspaper, I spend alot of time searching for news. I’m currently working on a time consuming investigation but this has to be done in between doing other work and what have you. So you’re right that we are at the mercy of the cut and thrust of the industry.

Look at David Leigh and his colleague at The Guardian’s recent BAE story in the UK. That must have taken months of research and look at the impact it is having across other media and in the political sphere there.

I think the Sundays here are more in that league than the dailies.

However, the combination of (i) the access of people outside these “media” organisations to information and (ii) the ability of all of these people to make that information available to lots of other interested people means that the old model is, at best, very frayed at the edges. I don’t know how much that fraying wil move towards unraveling of the fabric.

Having said that, I will admit that my comment is prompted more by remarks by Eoin O’Dell at a conference on “The Consitution at 70″ at the weekend, where the reference in the Bunreacht to the special role of the press in a democratic society was mentioned. My concern there is at the idea that, say, Damien Mulley gets some constitutional protection when his writing appears on tribune.ie that he doesn’t get when his words appear on mulley.net, or that Damien Mulley doesn’t get that protection because (most of) his income comes from not reporting news for publication whereas Shane Hegarty does because his income does seem inadequate to an age where we are moving towards greater participatory access in the information sphere as well as the decision-making sphere. But if that doubtful distinction should apply to a constitutional protection (Tipster mulls a “‘Contsituional Protection for Mulley’ Campaign”), I think it prompts us to question the idea of a “press” against whom we should measure the iportance of a piece of information.

A further point is that, at the moment, access to information in many areas is still difficult — how easy is it to track the decisions of your county councillors and their votes? (And contrast that with the Dáil and Seanad.) We need more openness there too.

Isn’t that what blogs do anyway though? Someone links, someone else reads then links etc etc. If it’s good enough it’s bound to make it to some ‘higher profile’ blogs. Or get nicked by Blogorrah