Here is a website.
Here is a website about a German Media Theorist.

More specifically that was Jürgen Habermas, who theorized in 1962 about the difference between a Private and Public sphere. You can read the whole essay after the link. The question at had is, which is that first link to the blog I posted, private or public?

Habermas describes how the newspaper, once mearly a buletin for notifications became a source of political opinion in the eighteenth century. However, he also goes on to describe how mondern media can often straddle that line:

"In the transition from the literary journalism
of private individuals to the public services of the mass media the public
sphere was transformed by the influx of private interests, which received
special prominence in the mass media."

It is certain that the once completely private sphere (consisting of unopinionated material) the news encompassed took on a more public one, but we all know that the news as it currently stands is not, "Citizens...confer[ing] in an unrestricted fashion". We know this simply because modern news is not a debate, but rather a series of statements the viewer is expected to take a face value.

Take a look at this clip. Just the phrase "and who knows what else" brings us to jump to certain conclusions. That is not to say that nothing should be considered public opinion simply becuase of the subtext which lies beneith every statement. Rather, I would place that clip on the border between public and private sphere because this footage is being financed and controlled by one body--sure, they take callers and have panel discusions, but the callers and screened and the members of the panel are hired. A public sphere is a place where anyone who wants to can get up and state their opinion, and by that virture I think modern news falls short.

With that in mind, it is difficult to place the forementioned blog in either sphere--it too is owned by a parent company (in this case, Kos Media) and presumably their writers are hired. However, it is far closer to being public than something like Fox for three reasons: first, a website costs less to produce and the company itself is independant, so the sphere of influence that private individuals have on the content is more limited. Second, because the format of the site is just one person stating their opinion after another rather than focusing on the conent of the story they jump straight to the opinions and provide an enormous variety of them. Finally, underneith each full article is a space for comments. Anyone who wants to can write here, regardless of whose paycheck they are on. While the articles are certainly given more rhetorical credit on the site, the comments are still there for everyone to see.