I was talking to Katie the other night about a whole bunch of stuff and she brought up a forum she had watched or read on media heavies weighing in on the issue of blogs and their extreme dibilitating shock that anyone with a Dell on dial-up can hang a shingle on the "I've Got Something To Say" street of media-making. This is so stupid it barely merits discussion, but hey, I'm newly re-enamoured of posting again, so here goes.
Of course media heavies hate bloggers. They subscribe to the idea of their own journalism as high culture and have enduring faith in the passive voice and its invisible author. They believe in an objective, factual reality for god's sake. But who turns to a blog for late-breaking national news? That's not the point of blogs, the point is commentary. And first person perspective. And ideas and reflections that will not make it into the newspaper. I don't think I've ever seen a blog in which the writer tries to sit in for a newspaper or other media source. There are certainly many that discuss the same things that traditional media sources discuss, but more often they are reflecting facts and originating opinions and ideas. The blogs that do report are telling stories about tiny, weird, specialized news-- the microscopic interest nuggets that would never see play in a mainstream publication.
Blogs are about curating a series of ideas and observations for a community of whoever is willing to show up. Like Homi K. Baba, asshole theorist, I too write for an audience of about six people in the world. If a loyal CNN watcher doesn't want to read about my toenails or my ideas about what the people at the DMV who are making me take a road test can go do to themselves, they can move on. Or flag my blog for being inappropriate.
But if they like my collection, they can stay a while and browse.
I am still super excited about that.
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Hey Robyn, here's where I heard the discussion in the first place. And Nora Young was very much in your camp, while Andrew Keen was very much Not. It was quite an interesting discussion, though.
CBC Radio: The Sunday Edition
15.July.2007
THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR
Duration: 00:24:24
Host Nora Young in conversation with Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture. While the potential of the internet is all the rage, Keen, a Silicon Valley alumnus, has written a polemic arguing that everything we know about the Internet is dangerous to the very foundations of western civilization. Keen believes that the democratization of the internet means an end to expert opinion, the very notion of truth, reasonable political discourse and the very business models that have allowed music, literature, movies, television and culture itself to flourish. Nora Young spoke with Andrew Keen from a studio in San Francisco.
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