The Boing factor
French novelist Gustave Flaubert once said, "Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed." The blogosphere contains some good information from traditional media outlets. But any idiot with a computer can start a blog, and unfortunately, stupidity can draw just as many hits as any coherent blog.
Sure, there are poignant blogs for politics. Anyone on the right can read Radley Balko or conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. And on the left there are plenty of blogs like Arianna Huffington's Huffington Post or the explosive Michael Moore. And ABC News features a political blog on politics with a more neutral approach.
But in today's era of terrorism, war, and global security, when the United States and the world could be on the brink of a world war, what blog story can unite or divide this nation and set the tone for a possible global catastrophe?
I don't know either, but I did find a cool looking picture of a Mr. Potato Head wearing an R2D2 costume. Alas, one of the most popular blogs, according to Technorati, is www.boingboing.net. This is what future journalists are going to have to compete with.
Got some inside dirt on a political candidate? Boring. How about a corporate scandal that could cost stockholders millions? Eh. But if you have a Flash application that lets you create your own Super Mario Brothers remixes, you could be an instant hit.
With attention spans dwindling because of the 10 second sound byte era, journalists are will have to develop creative sites that offer more than just inflammable rhetoric.
And it is not fair.
Four years (well okay five for me) of college, hours of research, and interviewing sources are not enough for the ever hungry public. Entertainment is the mother's milk of the blogosphere. Got an idea? Just spout it off. No information? Who cares? Just add a few exclamation marks and some flying toasters and you are in the clear. If journalists are going to make a dollar in this growing market, they had better find a unique to draw attention to their sites and throw caution to the wind.
Now excuse while I look up some stories on the nuclear capability of Iran, right after I browse a few pics of Darth Tater.
Comments
I don't see how blogs could be a bad thing and, to be quite honest, I found this post to be little more than whining (It's not fair??? Honestly, now). You seem to be highly critical of a media format which merely functions to support a person's freedom to speak. It doesn't matter what they're saying, it matters that it's being SAID.
Furthermore, although I generally do not have much time or desire to surf blogs, I have found that often they are not reporting the news so much as they are filtering it. The Huffington Post, for example, tends to let it's readers know who actually REPORTED the information.
I would posit that the "traditional media" has often taken a negative stance on this issue. I amusingly found a piece in a journalism magazine a few months back (I apologize that I cannot remember the name) that reported that blogs accounted for somewhere around 30 minutes of lost productivity per day per worker, but I didn't find any information that suggested companies in general were 6.25% less efficient than before blog popularity.
Any idiot with a computer can start a blog? Even idiots can make it to TV, newspapers, or even the radio (just look at Michael Savage). The key here is longevity: People by-and-large are not stupid. They can recognize good information and/or arguments, and in this way the system polices itself.
If you're critical of blogs out of a need to justify your ego or the time you've spent studying journalism, think of it this way: the journalists will go out tomorrow and report on the news. The listener will come home from her regular job outside of journalism, and, seeing what happened on the news, she will go to her blog, using it as a bulletin board to both track and display whatever opinion she may have.
As for the entertainment factor? It's rediculous to say that the use of humor in a person's hobby somehow puts you at a disadvantage. If a journalist is somehow feels affected because a blogger posts his story with an argument and a joke, then maybe he just plain sucks.
That being said, I'm sorry I don't know how to make any flying toasters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Joe Miller | February 9, 2006 10:50 PM
Thanks for reading. I would agree with you that some blogs do act as filters with commentary. But many sites offer ZERO sources and links, blurring the line between news and opinion completely.
Worse, there are no editors in cyber space. So while an MSNBC can fire a Michael Savage when he makes crazy statements (and he did and was he fired), the blogosphere can continue the rant without consequence. And while I agree with you that people are not stupid, they can be fooled by a slick looking blog that in reality is nothing more than a sourceless message board full of mindless dribble.
Posted by: mzillman | February 10, 2006 12:47 PM