Every morning, when I first sign onto the Internet, I follow the same routine. Check my Gmail account, catch up on my message boards, and check my AOL Mail account. But before I can reach my AOL mail, I must pass through the homepage where I check on the day's news and features. Now I'll be the first to admit that AOL probably isn't the best place to get my daily news, but they present the day's headlines in an easy-to-read manner, accompanied by feature stories that usually catch my interest. Generally, I spend about half an hour on AOL.com, and its partner sites, a day.
What I've noticed lately is the increasing presence of blogs on AOL's homepage. With the election season now in full swing, there is typically something new going on in politics everyday. Sometimes, usually on days of primaries, the day's main political headline gets the front spot on the page. However, other times a different news story gets the top spot and is accompanied by a small link at the bottom of the same frame. This link is related to the election, but isn't a link to a news story. Rather, AOL features a different blog on the first frame each day and that blog is usually accompanied by a poll. For instance, today's featured blog is by Mark Halperin of Time magazine and is about Barack Obama's increasing momentum. It then asks readers to answer a poll about the main reason for Obama's success in February.
In 2008, are political blogs replacing political news stories of past elections? How will this affect voters who are now reading other people's opinions daily rather than "unbiased" news stories? I guess we'll have to wait until November to find out.
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