hi all. there are several misconceptions and outright fallacies circulating about blogs esp among the now-threatened MSM, mainstream media. blogs are quite revolutionary, and as many OS writers/readers understand, the revolution is still in play.
the MSM viewed blogs with varying emotions/tone over the years. its not easy to chart this, but it went something like, first, idle curiosity. then weird/amazed fascination. then dread. then harsh criticism, where we are now. this is exacerbated by the recession that is very visibly slowly killing MSM like Seattle Post and Rocky Mountain News etcetera. the trend is combined with lack of interest by the next generation.
here are a few misconceptions Ive noticed lately.
[a] myth: many blogs are abandoned, therefore it shows the hollowness of the medium.
Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/fashion/07blogs.html
the first part of the statement is undeniably true. but, it is a general property of a lot of cyberspatial operations. it seems to reflect a similar trend, ancient in capitalism, however. most businesses fail. 9/10 startups fail. the MSM rarely reports on all these failures. it shows how the MSM often gives a highly distorted picture of reality. in a sense, the mass abandonment of blogs reflects reality more than the MSM does.
but, the conclusion is suspect. what is the meaning of an abandoned blog?? yes it seems tempting to conclude that its worthless, and that is the insinuation of the MSM. but a blog that is not updated can still get hits, sometimes in a really tremendous way. we see this phenomenon on OS where very old posts get phenomenal hits and stay at the top of popularity lists. this traffic comes from "out there" such as search engines, other blog links, etcetera.
so the model needs to be different. an abandoned blog is not really the same as a dead blog. the real measure is how much traffic a blog is getting, whether or not it is updated. this is not easy to measure. but, the basic/paradoxical reality is that abandoned blogs still get hits, implying some value.
but, there is a deeper question. what is the value of a blog? well this must take into a confluence of factors. how much does it cost to put those pages up? negligible. what does it do or provide for its readers? what does it provide for its author? and, possibly advertisers?
these are all to some degree abstract and unanswerable questions. we do not complain about old books lying on the shelves of libraries. we should possibly adopt a similar attitude toward blogs. in fact, it probably costs less to have old pages in cyberspace than it does in libraries.
[b] myth: blogging is parasitical.
Are blogs a 'parasitic' medium?
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070301niles/
again, there is an undeniable factor of truth in this, but the general principle is flawed. all writing is a sense parasitical on "reality". a journalist does not "create" a story, he reports it. he is to a degree passive. he is taught not to participate or "create" stories as a violation of journalistic ethics. all writing is a sense passive in this way.
but the more direct issue is that of excerpting headlines or text from other articles, and then pointing to them on a blog. AP recently complained about this w.r.t google [news]. now, this can be parasitic to some degree. but if you are only excerpting headlines or summaries, its hard to see how this is parasitical.
but, there are many sites that do indeed suck up entire pieces of content without permission. we only have a somewhat informal system of regulation for this-- complain to ISPs. I think there is some case to be made for a more formal system. but, with utmost caution-- such mechanisms seem to always undergo "mission creep" into censorship systems.
a curious fact of biology that few are aware of. about 3/5 of all species on the planet are parasitical!! phenomenal. so there is a sense in which parasitism is very fundamental to our reality. more on this in the outstanding book "parasite rex" by carl zimmer.
but, it seems that if blogs are parasitical, then arguably, the MSM is also.
the best model for the whole picture, I think, is that blogs and MSM coexist in an ecosystem. they both feed each other and sometimes, feed ON each other. the MSM writers and arguably blog writers also tend to have a difficult time understanding this. it seems we are always tempted to portray reality in an Us vs Them manachean view of reality. we are certainly encouraged to do so by our recent government Bush administration.
maybe peopele dont recall, but in the 2004 election, the issue of "nuance" was debated in the media wrt Kerry's purported strength in it and Bushes apparent weakness. but, it seems at the moment we have found a more nuanced view of reality.
now, I dont think I will have debunked these two myths for good. they will tend to stay around, and be debated, possibly even long into the future. they are almost metaphysical or philosophical questions. its not a coincidence that the title of the article is, "blogs falling in an empty forest". its an old journalistic/philosophical question, decades old. I think I recall my 5th grade english teacher asking the question. I wonder where it originated, that is an interesting question.
now, there is another closely related issue. what is the future of journalism and newspapers in the internet/cyberspace age? I dont know, I think it is still evolving as we speak. but we can see glimpses/hints of it all around us right now.
"The future is already here, its just not evenly distributed" --william gibson, SF writer, & coiner of the term "cyberspace"
two pioneers that are really worth watching. these are tens-of-millions of dollars cyberspatial media mini-empires that were built up by scratch by their founders, Huffington and Denton. they are fairly well known, but not widely well known eg in the newspaper industry.
think the future of journalism will be forged on sites like these. the basic reality is that we are in the midst of a revolution as big as that of the printing press, centuries ago. stay tuned.
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Cate Longshore
hoppingonthefly
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Max the Communist
Alicia PhD
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Salon.com
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