Good take on this subject from a blogger (Score 1)

John Kusch on his blog, Blee, Bloo, Blar, BLOG, makes the following excellent observation about Google's attempt to get users past the blogs:

Past the blogs to what? Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, I presume? I mean, who can write a decent PoliSci paper these days without comparing and contrasting Eric Alterman's take with Sean Hannity's in-depth analysis? There are several unchallenged assumptions at work here: 1. Blogs are a primarily populist medium, teeming with the unwashed amateurish masses. 2. The only people who read blogs are the people who write blogs. 3. Blog content isn't relevant content. Many bloggers are experts -- professionals in their fields who offer thoughtful, useful analysis of current events, science, art, social issues, health, and family life, that you simply won't find in most pre-fab media. Sure, you've got your disgruntled high school students, lonely pensioners, and internet personalities who are famous merely by virtue of the fact that they're famous; but you've also got talented writers, social theorists, inspirational digital photographers, scholars, therapists, activists, witnesses, and people who simply have beautiful lives. Blogs aren't just personal diaries and digital heaps of errata, and they aren't only useful to bloggers. As chronological repositories of referential data and original writing, blogs can benefit as many different people as there are areas of interest. You can go to a website to find out about Prozac, or you can go to a weblog to learn about a particular person's experience with the drug. Behind every corporate line and regurgitated Reuters feed there's a personal story. It isn't up to some college student with friends in the IT field (historically hostile to the use of technology to further art and connection) to decide what is and isn't relevant to the Web as a whole. By relegating them to their own Google "tab", certain blogs may become easier to find (though I'm not clear how do-it-yourself blogs like mine will be identified), but to segregate them for the sake of making "real" content easier to find points toward the same elitism that contributed to the rise of weblogs in the first place.