Marriage of blogs and news: Opposites attract?

International news media have gradually added blogs to their primary content over the past five years. The Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Reuters and the Voice of America, for example, use blogs as vehicles to report news. The same media organizations put additional news on paper, on air or on official websites. But blogs are traditionally for personal journals and private opinions. This study analyzes how the mass media are using blogs to convey news and why, as well as the differences between blog posts and traditional news content. A grounded approach to the content of blog posts and traditional content on the South China Sea dispute, an ongoing 2012 news story in Asia from six major international media shows similarities in writing styles, point of view and types of information presented. Comments solicited from journalists give insight into reasons that the mass media run their own blogs and how content is chosen for them. The study suggests that going forward news stories will be written more like traditional non-media blogs and that blogs may be influenced by the disciplined writing of journalists