Thoughts on new media

I was working on a story this week and it brought up a large issue for me in terms of where we as journalists are heading. The blogosphere (surely someone could have that of a better term than 'blogosphere') is growing to immense degrees at a staggering pace and "news outlets" havebecome innumerable. John Stewart is probably one of the leading sources among the most desirable demographic. And here we are learning this formulaic objective-model journalism.

Is this really where we should be headed?

Let me clarify: Blogs are often skewed, as are the major broadcast news outlets, as is the Daily Show. And no one seems to care! In fact, people love it. They can't get enough. Is it responsible? I doubt it. Does John Stewart understand his role as educator in this modern world? Maybe, but even if he does, the network will probably reign him in.
All of these outlets are biased, opinionated, and generally not nearly as well-informed or civic-minded as we try to be.

So then I got to thinking; In other countries it seems that, to an extent, journalists are understood to be among the most well-read and knowledgable people on a subject, maybe even as much so as their subjects. Anyone who's covered city politics, planning and zoning, even business I imagine, gains enough knowledge to start to judge events on their own. And I think in other countries people don't mind a bit of analysis, so long as it's done professionally and without much bias.

Analysis without bias, you say? What's that?
I believe it's possible. I also believe it could become important.

I was working on a story this week, and it came into play. The story was "Protection vs. Privacy" (1-31) and it concerned the state's ability to require DNA of convicts and their desire to be able to take DNA from arrestees prior to conviction. After researching I relaized that all the law would effectively do is remove the step at which police have to convince a judge to give them a warrant.
Well excuse me, but isn't that quite a large and important step, put in place to protect one's individual rights, to protect the defendant?

So I presented the facts, I got both sides to weigh in, I did everything we're taught to do here, and then I slid in a couple of things to really draw attention to the fact that these safeguards are put into the legal system for a very real reason and we cannot just hand them over. And my editor agreed with me. Hell, she got pissed when the copy desk lifted bits of them out.

It was minor, as it's all we're allowed in this setting. But it's a small example of what I think we could become.
The people are bored by straight news, apparently. They want opinion, but are drawn to uniformed and lazy pundit opinion. Talking heads.
But what if we offered them intelligent opinion news?

I'm not sure what form this would ultimately take. Could be intelligent blogs linked to our newspapers' website and linked to the pertaining straight-news story. Could be that for every story a reporter links his own blog about it. Would that undermine the principle of unbiased reporting, or would it add to transparency?