AMERICAN MEDIA:...News In The Time Of Rage & Ruin...The Internet Sets The Tone...For The Masses, A Decision On What To Believe...Information In The World Of Politics Seems To Have No Reins...A Free-For-All, Yes...Consumers Find What Suits Them...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...Back in the excitable 1980s, when I wrote about Mexico for The Houston Post, my traveling gear included a supply of Reporter Notebooks and a TRS-80, Radio Shack's portable computer. It was small, lightweight and reliable.

Even in the outs of Hermosillo in the hot and steamy Sonoran Desert, it did the job, even as at times I ragged on the hotel operator for help. Somehow, I managed to get my stories to Houston, from there and other out-of-the way places, where searching for a telephone hookup was also part of the job.

In Big Metro places like Mexico City, Monterrey or Mazatlan, things were easier, perhaps because I had a better choice of much better, much more modern hotels.

In any case, it all worked back then.

These days, professional journalism is a whole other world. High-tech cellphones have transformed reporting into an instantaneous gig, even for transmitting photos, the latter something, thankfully, I was not required to do.

Much is being said about the demise of newspapers, especially in small towns. Yes, thousands have closed shop in the last 20 years. A handful of majors remain, although they, too, have cut forces and accepted the Internet as a vehicle for their product.

I talk to someone in the business today and what you hear about is social algorithms, declining ad revenue, or AI-driven fakes.

Yes, the journalism business may be tanking, but the practice itself has never been more robust. As one friend told me, at what other time in history could someone have started writing and within a matter of weeks reached tens or even hundreds of thousands of readers.

But advances have trade-offs. At what price have we changed our needs for news and information?

So we ask: Is it a good idea to rely on a local news-oriented blog, even if the operator of such a website is not a trained (college degree in the field) or experienced journalist? That depends wholly on the honesty and motivation of the blogger. There is money to be made, of course, if that's what fuels the drive, although the checks & balances of serious editing are tossed by the wayside.

No blogger will ever admit to the idea that his blog would be better if edited by someone else. Blogs are all-too-often one-person, no editing operations that do and do not bring useful news. Most of them around here bring shallow reporting that leaves more questions unanswered than anything else.

I speak of smalltown blogs of the sort you see in the Rio Grande Valley.

There are better blogs in major cities, where the writing is exemplary and more than adequate. Google the subject matter and see for yourself.

I tend to agree that the Internet is both savior and damnation.

Broadcast news also falls a few notches from where it roosted back in the day. It's true: much of what a consumer gets these days is opinion, at times even partisan opinion. But the world has changed, as it tends to do from one decade to the next.

And news has changed right with it.

Still, the axion remains: You read and listen, and then decide whether you believe any of it...

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