Over the years, the internet has become an important medium for not just breaking the news but also collecting the news.

The information overload that the internet presents also poses a credibility problem – one can never be sure of the authenticity of the source especially when information has been made available at a suspect website under the guise of anonymity.

Some of the most important sources of news collection on the internet are: news websites, news groups, blogs and now even social media like facebook, twitter, MySpace and hi5.

Decide what kind of information you are looking for and what kind of story you are doing.

Choose sources that are likely to be reliable.

Make sure that your source of information is not anonymous.

Lack of quality control – unmoderated information.

Check for bad spellings and grammar and informal language; also mixing up of names, places, dates.

Watch out for too much criticism or too much appreciation; that is a sign that something is not right.

Check if the information has been dated. If not, then you probably don’t want to use it.

Check for objectivity and balance.

Consistency in the argument; make sure it’s not contradicting itself. 

A blog is a website of sorts maintained by an individual or organisation with regular entries of commentary, opinion, descriptions, videos, photos and links to other articles. Entries are in a chronological order and people who follow the blog(s) are usually allowed to post comments. This increases interaction.

Blogging has led to what is known as participatory or citizen journalism where every single individual who wants to can report, present opinions, facts etc.

Participatory journalism is what has led to news leaking whether or not an organisation wants it to be leaked. It has made the spread of information that much easier.

Among the many criticisms leveled against bloggers, the main one is that bloggers have no respect for copyright and can sometimes present a twisted, incorrect picture of what really happened or what should happen.