What’s so wrong with context, love and understanding?
March 21st, 2008 • Journalism, Social
There’s now a well-established universe of A-List bloggers. Among the millions of us sharing our mundane adventures, these people are the elite, the pivot around which the blogosphere rotates.
But far from evolving from enthusiastic semi-amateurs into a formidable new journalistic force, this elite may be turning inward. Cyndy Aleo-Carreirra over at Profy.com argues that they the more they argue among themselves, the more traffic it drives:
It’s making me miss the old days of a longer news cycle and a wider focus in what’s considered news, because I’d much rather read about the 89-year-old in Malaysia using the web for her political campaign than the latest blogger slapfest.
I’ll confess to reading many of those A-List posts every day through Google Reader. Much of it is inward, in-the-know debate among a Chosen Few on the west coast of America. If you work in the internet business (or have a web obsession that has gone way too far), it’s fascinating stuff.
But it’s a mile removed from the dream of a new form of open publishing challenging the mainstream establishment. ‘Slapfest’ says it all: at times, the debate among the few turns into the clown interval at the Big Top, complete with buckets of water and half-sawn chair legs. That’s a massive generalisation, of course - the likes of Irving Wladawsky-Berger couldn’t be further removed from Comedy Hour if they tried, and provide fascinating insights into the world around them. But too much of the new journalism is more akin to family feuding.
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