"Blogs were perceived as having a big impact on politics, technology and journalism. We wanted to go in and see what bloggers were doing.” (Amanda Lenhart, of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, quoted in The Times.)I can't disagree with the first sentence. Duh. The big blogs--Huffington Post (which I don't read, never having gotten past the oddness of her entry into my political conscience and subsequent evolution), TPM (skip), Daily Kos (nope), and the ones that I do read, like Curbed, Gawker, Gothamist, the Observer's The Real Estate and The Politicker, etc.--have had that "big impact."
There's only of few of them, and, as in traditional media or, well, any field dominated by a few players, they're big. (Some started small, then had that "big impact" and become big, while others simply started big or had a big base on which to draw. Huffington Post, the Observer's blogs, and even Curbed and Gawker come to mind in that latter category.)
Yet, the survey deals with blogs like this one. Which is good. It's valuable to know that we're just here fulminating about "politics and government (11 percent), entertainment (7 percent), sports (6 percent) and general news and current events (5 percent)..." along with the occasional use of the blog "as personal journals." (I do enjoy living my own personal cliche.)
But, really, it's just people writing letters to no one and everyone! It's not that exciting! It's not "having a big impact," with the few exceptions above, plus others! Thank you, Pew, for the hard-hitting news! Surveys shouldn't be news.
But, all that aside, Josh, your friend's blog from Beruit is tremendous and shows one way that blogs really have been able, in a small way, to effect some change somewhere. (Bear in mind that he's got readers in Spain because of traditional media picking up the blog, and Tom went straight to traditional media in order to help spread news to the wider world, with the blog being his own, unfiltered, more or less hidden output.)
(If, as I suspect, much of the above is rambling and pointless, I apologize. My brain is on vacation until mid-late August, and I'm hurrying to finish this post before rushing off to eastern Tennessee. Nifty!)
1 comment:
Oddly enough, the thing I'm most interested in is why you're going to Tennessee.
You're right, though--the blogger revolution didn't quite work out how its biggest boosters thought it would. The synergy between the two formats is interesting, however. Although Blogger didn't catapult Tom to stardom on its own, it certainly provided a convenient platform for Tom to put his writing out there and exercise far mor editorial control over his own work, with less fuss, than anything previously available.
See you in a few weeks, best dude.
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