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Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Blogging while patting oneself on the back....
I haven't been able to blog much for the past few days but that hasn't kept me from reading all the goings on.
Exactly when did bloggers start to believe that they are the next step in the evolutionary process that started with cave drawings (although some, like Misha, have evolved so far that they've come full circle back to pre-grunt) and has led to this?
The end of old media as we know it will arrive when the majority of editors come to respect the blogosphere for what it is instead of sniffing at those of us who contribute to it like we’re a bunch of gap-toothed peasants raising pitchforks at the palace.
Oh, puhleeze---
First off, let's start with the fact that bloggers couldn't exist without the so-called Main Stream Media (MSM) to provide them with blogging fodder. Cyber-gossip and closet case Matt Drudge would be running an all-night adult bookstore if he didn't have the mainstream media to link to, and bloggers, many of whom obviously check Druge hourly, use him as their launching pad as they speculate, postulate, and mentally masturbate for their respective echo chamber of fans. In other words, there ain't a whole lot of heavy lifting going on.
You see, the MSM (a pejorative used by the ankle-snappers who would kill for a paying media gig) actually employs people who leave the comfort of their home office (also known as the spare bedroom) and go to real offices where they make calls, or they interview people where they ask questions, or even to the scene of the crime where they see things and then, using their expertise, they assemble these details (which we will call "facts") into a coherent storyline that the average yokel can understand while eating his Frosted Mini-Wheats.
At this point the bloggers bumrush the blogosphere with their unrestrained opinions, untrained eyes, incomplete education, and whatever psycho-sexual baggage that they thankfully keep hidden away, and "weigh in" on the topic at hand. When they are good at it, it makes them into an editorialist. When they are horrid, they land a gig at The Corner.
Blogging is just a cyberspace letter to the editor, instant venting, and little else. It's not "new media" (which sounds like hubris reflux from the dot.com days Fast Company, anyone?). Just like Penthouse Forum was a collection of phony stroke stories designed to give teenagers hope and older white men false memories, blogs are like newspapers made up entirely of op-eds for the likeminded. Critical thinking is rarely the price of admission, and, speaking of admission, how many blogs would you pay to read?
This isn't to say that all blogs are worthless. Some are thoughtful, some are well written, and some are entertaining. Others have become useful vehicles for raising campaign funds for various causes. But if you were to take the whole blogosphere and separate the wheat (the good blogs) from the chaff (the bad blogs) you'd barely have enough to make a Triscuit.
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