Google recently launched a new service asking for users to write what it calls knolls, “authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects.”
Sounds familiar. With knolls joining wikis, blogs and the like as a medium for anyone to at least act like an authority on a subject, it’s beginning to blur the lines even more between fact and (not necessarily informed) opinion on the web.
We’ve had to take it for granted that what we’re told is fact long before the internet, but when you had a small selection of newspapers and TV channels to chose from it was easy to make a call on which ones were the most authoritative and trustworthy. The web has long since changed all that and the growth of social networking and Generation Y’s penchant for social commentary online means the waters are likely to be further muddied.
I think though that the winners of this confusion are likely to be those outlets that have built up a level of trust and credibility – i.e. the journalists and more traditional outlets. Certainly the blogs that I take most notice of, with a couple of notable exceptions, are those written by journalists I know or respect. And it’s likely that the print media is a better home for informed opinion and analysis because it comes with an established level of trust and credibility.
