About the blogs pt 1

Hmmm, if they can give bears monkey,
what about me?

Big Media Matt makes the following point

Mike McCurry's takeaway from his catastrophic effort to spin the blogosphere: blogging is "a primal scream in the darkness." Like the scions Bourbon Restoration he's remembered everything and learned nothing. People disagreed with McCurry about the net neutrality issue because people disagree about issues. People got so mad at him precisely because of this kind of patronizing attitude. He was peddling flimsy arguments as if it never occurred to him that the blogosphere is full of people who know a lot about the internet and could handle a grown-up argument (see a non-flimsy, though ultimately unpersuasive, anti-neutrality piece if you're interested).

One of the most neglected aspects of the blogosphere, in my opinion, is that precisely because it's (mostly) composed of people who aren't professional journalists, it's composed of people who are professional doers of something else and know a great deal about what it is they "really" do. Consequently, the overall network of blogs contains a great deal of embedded knowledge. The consensus that emerges from that process can, of course, be mistaken but even though the most prominent people expressing that consensus may not be experts in the subject at hand (the most prominent bloggers tend to be generalists), the consensus will almost always be grounded in some kind of well-informed opinions. If you want to push back on that, in other words, you'd better know what you're talking about and not treat your audience like a pack of mewling children.

The mistake McCurry makes is that he thinks the people doing blogs are like his kids and their friends and that ain't the case. Most of us are over 30 and have previous lives doing other things. So when he talks down to us, it's no different than sneering at a room full of reporters.It's going to bite you in the ass.

And believe me, we have access to professional assessments of topics, just like the traditional media.

posted by Steve @ 12:06:00 AM