Post-Schna-ulations

A word on blogs

Blog Overkill

For any who write blogs, read blogs, or are interested in blogs as a concept, check this out. Many are heralding blogs as the next big thing in digital media. Many are claiming that blogs are undermining and will eventually make obsolete journalism (as we have known it). The author of this article challenges the idea that the media should be threatened by blogs.

My thoughts, in brief, on the topic (not directly on the article itself):
- Blogs CAN be a great source of information, but as with ANYTHING on the internet, this should be done with caution. ANYONE can have a blog and can say what they want. There is no accountability. True, the current media is hardly fair, impartial, or necessarily accurate. However, one would hope that a journalist would have SOME accountability to research and report with integrity. At the very least, one would hope this would be true if he/she were a repeat writer for a particular paper, magazine, or news show. Of course, I'm not an idiot. I'm not claming that there would be no spin. I'm just saying that with blogs, there is spin too, but NO need to even TRY to present something even remotely factually based. So, while I don't believe everything I read, I trust what I read in the NY Times far more than what I read on so-and-so's blog.
- I don't believe that the time will come when there is no paper media. Even with the advances in technology that allow people to access the internet from pocket sized personal planners, cell phones, etc., I still think many people prefer to get the morning paper. Hell, even when I read News online, it's still is from the NY Times, or the Washington Post, or some other predominantly print based medium. And if it were free, I would prefer the hard copy to reading online anyway.
- Not everyone is technologically savvy, not everyone can afford a computer, not everyone has internet access.
- Blogs are a fad. I am curious to see what the status of blogs will be a decade from now, if they even exist. I already know of several people who have given up writing a blog after a year or so due to the pressure they have felt to post often, to be entertaining, whatever. Once the next big fad comes along, blogging will slowly fade into the background again.

- In general, I think the article makes a good point that a new technology or new phenomenon doesn't NECESSARILY make the old obsolete. Case in point, CDs and vinyl, television and radio (though television did ALTER radio), the internet and telephones...


One other thing I learned from reading this article is that 'ghetto' can be a verb, as in 'to ghettoize'. :)

posted by Schna @ 10:48 AM