The blogosphere's interactive, communal spirit is shaking the foundations of print journalism, but traditional journalists should embrace the change, says Roy Greenslade. News, he says, is no longer "one-way traffic".

"We [print journalists] conceived it [news]. We gathered it. We published it and broadcast it," he writes. "Blogging turns that model on its head. It allows people to question the information we provide. It allows them to produce their own information. It offers them a space to air their own views."

Greenslade says he is no longer certain that his own model of the future newsroom - a core of "professional journalists" overseeing a fringe group of bloggers - is viable. The news organization, he says, is vulnerable.

"...More fundamentally, I wonder whether a news organization is as perfect a model as we might think...It is entirely conceivable that the digital revolution may, in the fullness of time, sweep the media mogul aside," he writes.

Not that this is anything to be afraid of. Greenslade is ebullient when talking about the liberating potential of the blogosphere.

"The joy of the digital revolution is that it is bloodless, and democracy is at its heart," Greenslade writes. "It is the lack of unity that makes blogging so vibrant, so critical and also so self-critical."

For traditionalists who still cling to the old model - journalists as providers, citizens as recipients - and fear relinquishing this power to bloggers, Greenslade has some advice: let go.

"There is no us and them," he writes.

Click here for more on the converging media.

Source: The Guardian (Greenslade) through Journerdism