It's ironic that the last blog of the year covers a question that I think we've been beating around the bush on the whole time. I mean, we've spent so much time debating the relevance and importance of the Internet, but I don't think we've been realistic about things.
I really don't like this question because it doesn't treat the online community - and bloggers specifically - as what they truly are: Parasites.
How can a parasite survive without its source of food? You look at any of the really established, proven blogs like the Drudge Report or DailyKos or RealClearPolitics and you see a helluva lot of downstreaming. Literally, Matt Drudge writes maybe an article a day. (For good reason - he's a partisan hack.) Everything else on his site is a link to legitimate (most of the time) news sites.
But that's not to say that traditional outlets don't need to get their acts together. While the bloggers are just repurposing or linking to the regular media sites, it's important to note that bloggers and citizen journalism still do serve a purpose and help mold the agenda, just as broadcasters did in that medium's infancy. Terry Heaton, in his TV News in a Postmodern World, Part XXXVI, says it well.
"Broadcasting needs to return to its roots in order to have a successful future, and I'm not talking about the business basics. In its infancy, the industry was driven by an entrepreneurial spirit that brought us innovation after innovation and built a model that lasted for 50 years. But the business rules and concepts that carried the industry are exactly what's killing it today, and the only way out of that is to get back to that entrepreneurial spirit. Invite the right-brainers around you; get out the whiteboards and zero base your company."
While I don't think traditional media outlets are in danger of dying off, that may change. They need to let go of their dug-in ways and find a way to get that agenda-setting ability back from hack-jobs like Drudge.
Well I guess I don't have to write much on HIS paper this week.
Oy. Posts like this make me think that you're going to graduate j-school with a full-fledged set of prejudices to go along with your student loan debt.
It's very easy to set up straw men -- the NYT versus Gawker, CNN versus Drudge.
In national and major metro areas, bloggers largely do not compete with the media -- they comment on it and filter it for their readers. They're competing with the Op-Ed page of the paper, not A1. You're looking in the wrong place.
Those parasites you're talking about? They are the very news obsessives that subscribe to multiple papers and are the most likely subscribers to premium online services that will keep newspapers afloat. Time just hired blogger Andrew Sullivan -- because his readership is growing and theirs isn't. You might not like their politics, left or right, or their outspokenness -- but the clock's not going to be turned back to a time when readers remained meek, passive, and silent. "Readers should be seen on our circulation numbers and not heard" is a recipe for a newspaper bankruptcy.
It's suspiciously convenient that you're overlooking NewWest, or Talking Points Memo's Muckracking Fund, or Fishbowl DC -- because unlike the commentary blogs you choose for your apples to oranges comparison, those don't support your argument.
How many local newsblogs can you name without Googling? How many blogs by newspapers? How many newspapers host blogs for their readers, or have open online forums? If you can't answer these questions, you may be guilty of exactly what you're blaming your fellow bloggers for -- shooting your mouth off without doing your homework.