Some ‘real’ journalists don’t think bloggers can write
All of a sudden, after approximately 100,000 years on Earth, Homo sapiens or ‘human beings’ as we know ourselves to be called, have a means to communicate with the world: Blogs. Each and every one of us can now voice an opinion or even discuss facts, theories, laws, and hypotheses. You might think this is a great step forward in social and communicative evolution. The funny thing is, unless you’ve got a blog of your own, or you comment on others’, I’ll probably never have known that you even had an opinion. Some would say that this is a good thing. As a matter of fact, according to some pretty reputable media sources, blogs are doing a lot more bad than good when it comes to the sharing of information.
After reading this article at ‘Webpronews‘ entitled, ‘WSJ Takes Issue With Blogs’ and its link to the damning Wall Street Journal post in question (excerpt here from ‘Free Republic’, ‘The Blog Mob: Written by fools to be read by imbeciles’ one can’t help but get the slight feeling that not everyone feels so positive about the sudden rise in media prominence of the Blogosphere.
If you can read the Wall Street Journal article, (Those ‘top-of-the-food-chain’ mainstream media people can be pretty verbose (Oh my God!)-Could they be trying to prove their mastery of language is equal to being from a higher echelon of human wisdom and intelligence?) You will see that the author Joseph Rago doesn’t see much validity in blogging. For Rago’s world of writing and sharing of information ‘we’ve allowed decay to be passed for progress.’ Decay? Are blogs taking us backwards towards the dark caves of ignorance from whence we came? Were those caves actually filled with sparkling rays of illuminating creative light, and we’ve actually been devolving ever since we exited?
Although Rago’s rant is mainly focussed on political blogs (admittedly it is one of the most popular blogging topics) and judges them from multiple angles of attack, one idea that he expressed caught my attention, and that is the spontaneity of blog writing. He boldly remarks (Could he just be trying to create controversy?) that ‘the reason for a blog’s being is: Here’s my opinion, right now.’ He goes on to infer that in this instantaneous reactive style of writing ‘we rarely encounter sustained or systematic blog thought–instead, panics and manias; endless rehearsings of arguments put forward elsewhere; and a tendency to substitute ideology for cognition.’ (Note: Is ‘rehearsals’ the word he was looking for? Not to be pedantic…)
I don’t know about you, and political blogs aren’t really my scene (I agree with Rago that politics can be incredibly boring), but could all of the 55 million blogs in the world be poorly written? Are we all writing from a state of mind that hasn’t incorporated preceding moments of reflection and/or intelligent analysis? Is mainstream media’s writing so different from that of the Blogosphere? I am aware that many blogs write from a ‘personal diary’ type of approach, but I’ve also recently gotten the feeling that this trend is changing.
People are concentrating on more specific topics, and in doing so, are writing at levels that are so in-depth, I would have to put forward the notion that mainstream media is now often being left floating at only the bare surface of our social consciousness. We are now looking to blogs for the real details. Rago creatively remarked that ‘bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM (Mainstream media) like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.’
From my perspective, I picture mainstream media as being driftwood bobbing up and down on the surface of a river. This stream only leads towards the delta of detailed information lying in wait at the entrance to a deep blogging ocean whose water levels are rapidly increasing by the second. The really good blogs are deep-sea vents of volcanic activity…the same places where arguably life began: Individual amoeba and individual human beings’ actions creating futures they themselves could never have imagined.
You may think that Jesse S. Somer is simply defending his chosen mode of communication as well as his choice of blog topic: Blogs. Just remember, if it weren’t for blogs, you probably wouldn’t be hearing this voice at all.
A pen and a pencil meet in the night, two writers relating, hoping to see the light.
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