Tonight, bare witness to the ultimate showdown. In the red corner we have..weighing in at 520 lbs..Mainstream 'Infotainmentizer' Media!! In the blue corner, sizing in at 92.5 lbs..The Blogosphere!! LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE!!

You just read the introduction of the fight for journalistic integrity. That is if news entities could be transformed into real people and allowed to fight inside a boxing ring. You know -- the fight you read about in various publications.

Each side has their own jabs and combos they like to throw around. The mainstream news likes to remind people that blogs are made up of unreliable sources and rumor mongoring. The blogosphere then defends itself by claiming that mainstream news is nothing but infotainment, and corporate sponsorship.

A recent article by Jordan McCollum, provided an insightful and humorous take on the constant battle for the information super highway. It's a reaction piece to an article from the NYT, that takes a couple of shots at blogs about how they're driven by the 'rumor bin'.

As someone who writes on a few blogs, my opinion isn't the most objective. Which should be the point we take from this back and forth arguing about information -- there's very little true information out there. I think that's one lesson that the internet has taught us concerning news in any form. Very little of it is completely factual.

Is the mainstream news full of infotainment nonsense, and corporate driven information? Well of course it is. Every mainstream media outlet is in control by a conglomerate that has a lobby somewhere in Washington. On the flip side, do bloggers and online journalists fudge up their sources, and rely on rumor driven information? Again, of course they do. It's what brings in the visitors; the hot and new information. Then everyone can link to them so they can drive their numbers up on Google.

I think that this argument is great because it shows the truth, which is that there's very little objective information out there. When you read a news report, the first action you should take is countering it with other sources of information. It's quite funny, and enlightening to check out a news report and then see how it's being written differently somewhere else. In a world where there's so many "sides" and fundamentalist based thinking, it can be hard to listen to a copius amount of information. Especially when the information might provide insight that goes against your own beliefs.

I guess the moral of today's note is that in the fight for journalistic integrity, there's no real winner. All we can do is surround ourselves with as much information as possible, and then form what we see as fact based on the findings. Kind of sucks, doesn't it?

The ideas presented in the WebProWorld newsletter editor's note do not reflect the thoughts, and ideas of the WebProWorld community.

| JohnnyV |