Blogs
The blogosphere is not a thing
Kudos to my M-list buddy Kent Newsome for posting pretty much what I intended to write (if I had been around a computer at the time) after I read Stephen Baker’s recent piece at BusinessWeek’s Blogspotting. Baker’s post came in response to a comment by Steven Streight — aka Vaspers the Grate — on a previous Blogspotting post. In complaining about the number of blogs filled with drivel, Streight said that “as the blogosphere fills up with more and more worthless blogs, the overall quality and reliability of the blogosphere as a whole declines.”
In his post, Baker notes — correctly — that “the blogosphere by itself has no credibility. Individual bloggers build their own credibility.” The fact that there are thousands of inane, asinine, flaccid or insipid blogs out there doesn’t diminish the quality of those that are good. If anything, it enhances the good blogs by making them seem even more rare. And Kent makes the same point: “Saying that the blogosphere is losing credibility is like saying the spoken or written word is losing credibility. It’s not the medium that matters - it’s the person at the other end of it.”
For what it’s worth, Vaspers clarifies his argument here.
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Media do become *as a whole* degraded and devalued. They may not go away, but they become perceived as stupid, boring, unprofessional, etc. For example, no business people use CB radio to communicate. Maybe not the best example, but you know what I mean.
I just don't know what our marching orders are. Stephen Baker predicts, in his comment on my blog, that soon the serious bloggers will not call themselves "bloggers".
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:^)
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