Open Source Media, formerly Pajamas Media, launched yesterday its new blog portal that seeks to arrive at a synergy between traditional and grassroots approaches to journalism

OSM^TM (yes, it’s actually an oxymoron) basically aims to

expand the influence of weblogs by finding and promoting the best of

them, providing bloggers with a forum to meet and share resources, and

the chance to join a for-profit network that will give them additional

leverage to pursue knowledge wherever they may find it. From academics,

professionals and decorated experts, to ordinary citizens sitting

around the house opining in their pajamas, our community of bloggers

are among the most widely read and influential citizen journalists out

there … We also plan to provide

a bridge between old media and new, bringing bloggers and mainstream

journalists—more and more of whom have started to blog—together in a

debate-friendly forum.

OSM would also like to clear the notion that blogs “are mere online ‘diaries,’ where egoists

and sentimentalists record their thoughts and feelings,” and seeks to put forward that concept that “the

phenomenon of blogging is much more than that; it’s the modern

equivalent of the Gutenberg revolution, a way of putting not just

published material in the hands of the public—but publishing itself.”

IMHO, it’s an excellent development that there are now entities that

seek to marry the concepts of traditional and new media.  Hopefully,

this will lead to a synergy, in that the mainstream media will learn

from the honest-to-goodness, no-holds-barred, uneditorialized

publishing of bloggers, and that the citizen journalists will learn

from the systematic , thinking-of-the-bigger-picture reportage of their

veteran counterparts.

Check out their contributors’ profiles.  I note that one of top Pinoy bloggers, political pundit and historian Manolo Quezon, got onboard.  Two other bloggers of Filipino descent, Michelle Malkin and Richard Fernandez, are part of the team.

Hats off to Open Source Media for espousing this noble advocacy!  And kudos to the OSM bloggers, as well!

(via Yugatech and Philippine Commentary)

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