'Vanguard Journalism' Grows More Dangerous

With the splintering of the media into millions of blogs, it's growing more difficult to make an impact on an audience--let alone the 18-to-34 demographic. And that may be in part to blame for the imprisonment of two U.S. journalists.

This New York Times article illustrates how journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, currently sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean labor camp for trespassing, may have been detained in part because their employer Current TV, was struggling for audience share, and the women were emboldened to get their story--on refugees--no matter how dangerous the pursuit.

An excerpt: “There’s an impetus with any upstart news organization that you have to be bolder and you have to be more aggressive than other news organizations to get attention for your stories,” said Kevin Sites, a freelance journalist who covered conflicts for Yahoo. “That has to be admired. That also has a real inherent risk in it.”