What impact do the explosion of news sources and the emergence of citizen journalism have on politics and on the reporting of political news?

What will be an ideal response?

Answers will vary. The news culture is changing, and at the heart of this change-and of much innovation in news delivery today-is the blogosphere. There has been a veritable explosion of blogs in recent years. To make their Web sites more competitive and appealing, and to counter the influence of blogs run by private citizens and those not in the news business, the mainstream news organizations have themselves been adding blogs to their Web sites.Blogs are offered by independent journalists, various scholars, political activists, and the citizenry at large. Anyone can create a blog and post news or information, including videos, to share with others. Many blogs are political in nature, both reporting political developments and discussing politics. Taken as a whole, the collection, analysis, and dissemination of information online by the citizenry is referred to as citizen journalism. Other terms that have been used to describe the news blogosphere include people journalism and participatory journalism. When blogs focus on news and developments in a specific community, the term community journalism is often applied.The increase in news blogs and do-it-yourself journalism on the Web clearly poses a threat to mainstream news sources. Compared with the operational costs faced by a major news organization, the cost of creating and maintaining blogs is trivial. Moreover, the most successful blogs are able to sell advertising. Because of their low costs, it does not take much advertising to keep such sites in business.