Inside and Egocentric
Jonah Goldberg has written another column about blogging ("whoring for hits again," as Bill Quick puts it.) As usual, he's got some great lines, including his parody of a self-regarding blog entry: "this morning Robert Wright responds to my criticism — first made here three months ago — that Tim Noah has it wrong about James Glassman's critique of Mickey Kaus's interpretation of my use of the phrase 'tragedy of the commons.'" And he may well be right that the blogger phenomenon is "less revolutionary than its boosters claim."
It seems to me, though, that he's looking at it from the wrong end, that is, from the point of view of the professional media. To look at a list like this and see only a "useful personal marketing tool" is to miss the point (and miss it by a mile, which is odd, since Goldberg has some credibility and background here, unlike other naysayers.) Sure, some blogs are maintained by pros, but most are not. Let me put it in simple terms that even a professional, mainstream journalist should be able to understand: these people are your readers, dude. And a lot of them, in their spare time, seem to be able to do the job as well or better than some of the pros. They're almost always funnier and more entertaining, too. (Though not in Jonah's case-- you can't fault him for lack of humor.) And I believe they are beginning to demand a bit more from the journalism and punditry they consume.
It wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say: show me an NRO reader without his or her own blog, and I'll show you an NRO reader who just hasn't stumbled upon InstaPundit yet. It may be perfectly true, as Goldberg says, that "the good ones are good because the people behind them are good," while "the bad ones are awful and not worth the free ones and zeroes they're printed with." But this could also be said of "legitimate" mainstream journalism. There's a lot of dead wood out there, especially on editorial pages. It used to be that the only recourse in the face of this or that idiotic slop-ed was to write a strongly worded "imagine my surprise" letter to the editor, or wait till some professional writer got around to doing it (at which point you could write the editor an "I find myself in complete agreement" letter.) The whole process takes weeks-- even if you've got the time, who has that kind of patience? In the blogosphere, such editorials get picked apart instantly (often expertly) by a legion of enthusiastic vultures the second they are published. I don't know to what extent, or exactly in what way, but I do know this changes things, regardless of whether Andrew Sullivan could make more money if he got another real job.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has tried the following experiment: read a single day's links and comments from someone like Reynolds or Welch, then sit back and watch the mainstream media catch up to the stories a couple of weeks later. It seems to me they've got all sorts of catching up to do.
Posted by Dr. Frank at January 12, 2002 12:15 AM | TrackBack