Journalism can broadly be divided into social commentary and reporting. I think Christopher Hitchens was right when he pointed out that the problem with blogging and news commentators is that it is essentially feeding off “old” media. I think that what he means by that is that bloggers (i.e. politics youtube videos, most social commentary on the internet) do not have the resources to do their own reporting so they are dependent and effectively leaching off traditional media. Arguably any social commentator, and that includes Christopher Hitchens is dependent on other sources and reporters for their news but this is more true for bloggers to the extent where it feels they may be just regurgitating what is already available, that they are just reading news out of the papers and make it seem new by putting their own spin on it. I guess in defense of political bloggers and youtubers it could be said that they are bringing to the forth stories that would otherwise go unnoticed and are ignored by the public and by the media but the criticism still stands that they are just social commentators and not reporters.