Some years ago now bloggers were saying that the power shift between bloggers and news reporters aka journalists would one day shift. Everyone thought that this would be a slow and gradual shift however with pay walls being erected by newspapers to protect their print and online revenue streams we are beginning to see interesting reports that these just don’t work.

If you then combine this with the recent News of the World scandal and the likelihood that these sort of payments for information happen more often than is publicized then interesting things could be considered. The traditional press have tended to trade their information within their newspapers based on level of trust. Trust that the news is reliable, factual and honest. They also make out that they are transparent in the way in which they get hold of this information through tip offs from people either named or unnamed. Obviously from time to time this comes at a fee, this subject is generally taboo and as a result is swept under the table as journalism’s dirty little secret. How else would they get the headlines after all?

Interestingly we are seeing the online news organizations doing similar an following some of these patterns… They too have built up reputation, trust, facts and try to portray an honest outlook. Interestingly they seem to be more transparent than traditional press and state regularly that they had a tip off. Again they don’t seem to mention financial compensation for information. With trust being broken with traditional press it does beg the question of whether online news organizations are actually more trustworthy and do more due diligence before publishing or whether first to post actually wins. I suspect the latter unfortunately… So where is the news organization that actually trades on honesty and integrity? Who is it that discloses amount paid for information… Would this open up the industry to more scrutiny… it would certainly make for interesting reading to see how much information is really worth….