I am intrigued by the current debate going on over the future of print journalism. Recently, The Daily Beast, weighed in with their opinions on the fate of print journalism. It is an interesting argument coming from one of the new leaders in online news and opinion. But here is the question, are sites like The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, The Women on the Web providing enough impartial journalism or are they too heavily weighted with opinion pieces?

Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, spoke at NYU recently and provided her observations on the importance of strong investigative reporting and print journalism. But can’t strong reporting come on the web? Is it the immediacy that causes people to consider it to be insignificant or inaccurate?  It is that the rush of getting the story out FIRST propels most websites into disseminating news before it is checked for accuracy or fact? This is the primary problem that leads to a lack of trust with online sources. However, in the world of topical issues, the more voices heard, the more accurate the understanding of the issue at hand. If you search for how the recession is affecting relationships, you find a number of personal, well thought out and well written stories about people’s reaction to the current economic downturn. This is the internet at its best. I think websites excel when they adopt the “Lifestyle Section” method for delivering information. These are the stories that people want to send around, talk about, use to create a dialog and post comments and reactions.

Yes, websites don’t have the same strict and stringent editorial process, but that doesn’t mean the information or news they provide is any less valid. In certain ways it mirrors how we, as a society, think and work, moment to moment with things changing all the time.