ABSTRACT
This chapter provides readers with a better understanding of the characteristics of live blogs and their production. It looks at data from the annual digital news survey conducted by the Reuters Institute for the study of journalism, which tracks the use of live blogs by regular online news consumers on four continents. Live blogs appear to be prevalent. According to A. Tereszkiewicz, live blogs' frequent quoting of other media sources "may be interpreted positively as a strategy aimed at providing readers with as complete a picture of an event as possible, together with various interpretations of the event." The chapter shows how, through real-time online reporting, journalism may be becoming more transparent yet also more speculative. It analyzes developments in journalism's forms and production and to debate how those developments are changing assessments and even definitions of media plurality and journalistic objectivity.
