A great tool I use to update myself each and every morning is my Flock browser.  I can view RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter and new trending media.  That is of course while I’m listening to ESPN radio streaming live online.

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Seemingly disparate sources of information appear when looking at my daily intake of media sources — if this were quantified it would probably make little sense.  Vatican Radio, The Economist and the SALT lectures?  National Review and Der Spiegel?  The question isn’t so much what information we ingest, but why we ingest it.  The National Review presents a perspective I am frequently disinclined to agree with, but it also presents a perspective that forces me down a path of critical thinking in justifying my own beliefs (and “belief” is the key word here). Vatican Radio speaks to my deeply held beliefs as does The Nation, though the stories and views represented in The Nation speak to a very different set of beliefs.

There increasingly seems to be a need to define and categorize people into something more finite, something more measurable.  This has always existed, of course, but there seems almost a desperation in it today.  The dilemma is that while we seek to segment and structure the human condition, we have ever greater avenues to remold ourselves on an hourly basis.  Perhaps this is why I’ve largely given up blogs.

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 Having been a working journalist, I prefer to get my news from a variety of 
reputable media outlets. I want to know that it is journalists doing the 
work in an ethical and (as closely as possibly) objective manner. I want 
the names, facts and dates verified and free of bias.

 Today, more than ever, people are turning to blogs and social media as their 
outlets for news. People don't trust the media anymore, they call them 
biased and corporate and instead turn to the underdog little guys for "the 
real scoop." Sometimes the blogs and social media break a story before 
traditional news does. And as journalism and muckraking reporters were the 
public watchdog for the 20th century, in the infancy of the 21st that role 
has been donned instead by the Blogosphere.

"HMMMM RT @zappos: Bloggers are WAY more trusted/influential vs regular 
media. http://bit.ly/9n6YXR" 
- ReTweet by @BrookeBeason, Social Media Coordinator

 This is a troubling social shift. The Press is accountable. The Press is 
responsible. Facts are checked and facts are verified and, if something is 
misspelled or there was an error, The Press makes these public and corrects 
them. There is, in effect, institutional oversight of The Press. They are
legally responsible. Simply put, real journalists work to create real content 
under legal and ethical constraints and are held accountable as such.

 Not so with blogs or social media. These outlets may or may not check any 
facts. Quality is low but quantity is up. They are rarely held legally 
responsible for anything posted online and if there was a mistake in 
reportage or an altering of a photo, who cares? Apparently not the consumers 
of this media. Certainly there have been foul cries of partisanship and bias in some 
publications or TV outlets. Who is to blame? One can assume that the rise of 
the internet and the 24/7 news cycle has created a demand for content that 
simple reporting just cannot feasibly fill. Concurrently, desire for 
"infotainment" and partisan opinion has led to the "Op-Ed" bleeding into 
regular coverage. Why? Because consumers sought it out. They proved online 
that ad dollars would go up for a partisan site because in this era of 
unlimited choice, the public picks their information a la cart tailored to 
their interests and viewpoint.

"Stop claiming Social Media expert. Unless you're some kind of Autobot 
Transformer, there's no way to be an expert in ever-changing field. #in" 
- Tweet by @DarcyMcIsaac, Marketing and Digital Media Coordinator at The 
Parrish Law Firm

 So, how did The Press respond to the money segregating to singular 
political/belief/interest spectrums? How did they respond to an impossibly 
increasing news cycle with alarmingly decreasing profits? Some cut costs, 
some cut journalists and some simply gave in; marking the rise of 
cheap-to-produce news pundits, infotainment and wall-to-wall coverage of the 
most asinine events.

 From a social perspective, this greater connectivity between humans that the 
Internet and social media have afforded has, inversely, invisibly segregated 
society. The old model of gathering information from trusted individuals in 
a social web and from a trusted media outlet has dissolved. Now, every 
blogger or @Handle is a trusted individual hand-picked by the consumer to 
feed their worldview. Everyone is looking through their own particular hue 
of rose-tinted glasses.

"@craignewmark praises Daily Show for investigative reporting and 
fact-checking. Calls it the bet news show on TV. #rjicraig" 
- Tweet by Joy Mayer, Design Editor at The Columbia Missourian   

 It's not ironic that this is being posted to a social media experiment. For 
better or worse, this fragmentation of media and information will continue 
into the future. Every connected individual on earth now having a soapbox 
and a platform. What comes next will be interesting to watch. Will there be 
a monetization of social media? With billions of people saying something but 
few saying something that really matters, will there be a proverbial 
separation of what and chaff? How will this interconnected isolation further 
affect social structures, brand management and messaging in both The Press 
and elsewhere? Troubling, yes, but also exciting.

 However, no matter how loud the bloggers and tweeters cry out, no matter 
how large the social media soapbox becomes, the simple and obvious truth 
is that with no arbiter of accuracy and quality bloggers will never have the weight of a 
trusted and accountable institution and will never be real journalists.

 What remains to be seen is how far the paradigm will shift.