Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
User Journal

Journal pudge's Journal: Death of the Blogs 20

Journal by pudge

Everywhere I turn, people are talking about blogs. It's pretty retarded. Time has a blog of the year, whatever that means. CNN has a segment where they have two young women reporting on what the blogs are saying. If I wanted to know, I would read them. I could not possibly care less what LGF or Power Line or Wonkette or Daily Kos are saying today. (Sorry.)

That whole story about the CNN news executive ... I didn't find out about that until it was already a dead story. I didn't care. And I am glad I didn't care. I am glad I didn't find out about it until NewsHour reported it was all over and he had resigned, when I could actually get a complete picture from knowledgable people. Why should I care? Some silly person said something silly and other silly people took exception to it. So what?

The Gannon thing is even worse. It's not even a story. You see, a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The Gannon story is all middle, and a little bit of end. The beginning and the bulk of the end are missing. We don't have any clue who did what or why, or what will become of any of it (except that Gannon himself resigned).

And that's what the blogs are good at: the middle. Getting into a story halfway over and giving us a rundown of part of what's happened. Even with some of the exceptional work some of them did on the Dan Rather/CBS/memo story, it was only part of the skeleton of the story that was offered. It was an important piece, but only a piece. It was not a story.

These blogs are like that guy at work who listened to Bill O'Reilly all day and says "hey, did you hear? Bill Clinton killed a baby seal with his bare hands!" If you care to look it up, you find out that a single seal died as the result of a bill he signed, which saved hundreds of other seals. It's only a small part of the story, and often slanted so that you can't even tell what the real story is.

This isn't about journalism vs. blogging. This is about blogging vs. itself. It sucks. It's boring and dull and doesn't lead us to truth. Oh sure, there's the occasional story where, *eventually*, we find out something resembling truth. But that's the exception, not the rule. Rather, we found something sorta resembling truth in the end. Gannon and Jordan? Not so much.

And don't even get me started on the overwhelming ignorance involved in the many blog analyses of different federal policies.

Gannon, Rather, Jordan, it all follows the same pattern. Latch on to some interesting bit of information that is only part of a much larger story, slant it to suit your political bent, and then make as much out of it as you can. Hey, look at me, look what story I can blow out of proportion! Link back to me KTHX! What is this, 1996?

Wake me when it's over.

(I don't normally use the term "blog" except in quotes; that I use it here without quotes means I am speaking about a specific subset of "blogs", and I am using the term derisively.)

This discussion was created by pudge (3605) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Death of the Blogs More

Death of the Blogs

Comments Filter:
  • UserFriendly had a funny commentary, that blog is all about the "me" and "I". When challenged for proof, the wise old sysadmin pointed out "they took the `we'" out of weblog, didn't they".

    Most of the people I've read about the Eason Jordan kerfluffle pointed out that it was a non-story. The only real story was that CNN decided it could play games with the issue rather than treat it. Another comic illustrated thusly [coxandforkum.com].

    Like anything else there are good and bad examples. While so many seem to be pop-culture (y
  • Gannon, Rather, Jordan, it all follows the same pattern. Latch on to some interesting bit of information that is only part of a much larger story, slant it to suit your political bent, and then make as much out of it as you can.

    Like talk radio or news analysts, blogs are probably here to stay. While bloggers aren't usually paid to tap into our feelings of ideological supremacy, unlike those in talk radio or on our favorite news channels, we've become a sound bite culture and I'm very much unsurprised tha

    • Part of the blog phenomenon we see in the states is the lack of Brit style tabloids that will print anything about anyone. In the UK, you can read a story about Tony Blair and Prince Harry going on an 8 dad coke binge while masturbating to pictures of the queen mum, but we don't even have rags that will print "Bush breaks wind at state dinner". It is a slightly different press culture, so the void gets filled by bloggers and cranks on teh internets
  • They question the media, force them to do their footwork. The whole 'Rathergate' thing was because of bloggers refuting the evidence that ten years ago would have been passed off as truth with very little resistance.

    What they lack in middle and end, they make up for with content and expertise.

    Granted 99.99975% of the bloggers are morons, but I still think they edge out network news executives.
    • If the mainstream media did its job properly, then even this limited utility they serve would disappear.
      • But that's the thing. They aren't doing their job properly, so the first couple rounds of 'pure' media, including sites like Slashdot, Fark and the blogs, are springing up to fill the gap.

        Like any other media, they serve a purpose, but should be taken with a grain of salt.

    • ...but I still think they edge out network news executives.

      There's the rub: news used to be funneled through the mainstream media outlets; now, like any other obstruction, news routes around them.

      It should make the media nervous. If I had an RSS feed for the daily obituaries, I wouldn't visit my hometown newspaper's site ever. (The point being that the local newspaper is a piece of crap - but they have a lock on being the only source for obituaries.)

      I do visit some people's blogs. I have an interest

  • Makes sense in a way...
    • Thank you. I've done this before and no one calls me on it. I was waiting for that!
      • Heh. This, to me, is the beauty of blogs: the bloke on the soapbox can be called on something, in the open. Moreover, it's never a full-stop takedown; the callers can themselves be called in turn. News has always been a contest of reputations, evidence, and rhetoric. With blogs, more of that is exposed than before, so many of the games one can play by hiding some info here and exposing some there can no longer be viable.
  • I don't have a real problem with bloggers, I read a few occasionally and even have my own blog, but the problem I have with a lot of them is that they take themselves way to seriously. Some of them think they are the only thing standing between us and a tyrannical and biased main stream media with a sinister agenda. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that they themselves are biased and have also have an agenda.

    • Some of them think they are the only thing standing between us and a tyrannical and biased main stream media with a sinister agenda.

      Hmm. I haven't had too much of a problem with what I've read online, but I think part of it is that I haven't read much if anything from people who felt this way.

      I do view the web as a whole (I refuse to separate out "blogging" into a distinguishable category) as contributing to both the informedness and the critical evaluation skills of the public, but I think it is a v

  • is... I read it for the same reason I watch the daily show. It amuses me. I mean, the drinking games, the jabs, it's not serious. At least, I hope it isn't.

    Daily Kos and LGF are both run by freakin' nutjobs. Different political affiliations, but hey, I'm a liberal and I lay no claim to Daily Kos or *ugh* Democratic Underground. I hope conservatives feel the same way about LGF and the Freepers.

    Now OTOH, talking points memo, instapundit, tacitus, and the agonist are all quite good for what they are.
    • The key is to read them, but to weigh their credibility accordingly. I browse both on occasion to see what both sides are planning so I'll know when to heat up the popcorn.
    • When I read DU and Dailykos I have to assume this is now the mainstream of the democratic party. They did get their candidate as DNC chair didn't they? The problem seems to be that they ARE pulling the strings of the democrats these days.

      Choice thread from DU yesterday was one advancing the notion that W (likely on the word of Karl Rove) ordered Hunter Thompson killed and boy were they pissed. Come on over, there's room in the big tent for you too.
    • I hear you. I lean conservative, and I've never listened to an entire Limbaugh broadcast nor read an Ann Coulter book. ...Actually, I should probably be somewhat ashamed of that, since it means I can't really speak critically of their viewpoints.

      I will say that I've read (and own) Limbaugh's The Way Things Ought To Be, and agreed with some of it, but not all. (It's been over a decade, so I don't remember much.) I've listened to parts of The O'Reilly Factor, and it seemed okay, though I wasn't paying ful
  • I think that the current idea of a blog is a fad but the technology isn't. The real revolution is that blog platforms allow anyone to publish online without the need to know anything about web servers or HTML or CGI, etc. I think the idea of "having a blog" will fade away not because people stop doing it but because it will just become synonymous with "having a web site" (which may eventually just become synonymous with "writing" or "publishing")

    It's like when PC's first allowed people to "use a computer"
    • What we currently think of as a blog is not really the new thing itself (the technology) but what people are doing with it.

      I don't even think that's new. It has been done on the web nearly since its inception. And it is not significantly dissimilar from what Thomas Paine did 230 years ago, except in that it gets out more quickly: seconds instead of weeks.

      Eventually what will happen is that mainstream media will take over again. It always happens this way. People will always maintain the ability to pu
      • I think that big media will definitely regain prominence but I'm also partial to the ideas of Daniel Pink in Free Agent Nation. He says that the industrial revolution took the means to earn a living away from the home (e.g. the equipment to manufacture goods now required a factory rather than a corner of the house) while current technology is bringing the balance back towards the home and the individual.

        Of course, how far back remains to be seen.

        In any case, the possibility of self-publishing and actually

Slashdot Top Deals

He who is content with his lot probably has a lot.

Close