So, I have to admit that I'm not the world's biggest fan of blogs. In fact, I've been known to question their value (in public) and wonder if so much of their current popularity isn't due to deft media hype. I know, I know...it's not very NexGen or 2.0 of me. But before you write me off as Michael Gorman with a nose ring, let me explain my apparent heresy.
I have absolutely no problem with blogs as a means of communication (and here's the part where I claim, "some of my best friends have blogs..."). But within the past two years, I feel like blogs and bloggers have been elevated by some commentators and experts to heights beyond their innate worth or purpose. We've all heard about how "citizen journalists" and their blogs will replace traditional media - obviously, creaky ol' news outlets can't compete with snappy, modern bloggers and the power of the Internets. But 9 times out of 10, when I read the work of one of these supposed rogue journalist-bloggers, I find that they are either basing their story on the work of an "old school" news outlet (NYT, Reuters, BBC, etc.) or simply re-transmitting a story from one of the aforementioned with some commentary. And that's fine, but it's not journalism and it raises some serious questions about how news blogs will survive if the prognosticators are correct and newspapers disappear in the next few years. Where will they get the raw materials for their stories??
In short, I think blogging technology is great and I'm happy to peruse my favorite sites every day (fed to me conveniently by my RSS reader...but that's another story in another blog), but I see it as a yet another tool in the ever-evolving world of communication technologies- not the final frontier.
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