Blogs are not cutting edge. They're just a new paint job.
Blogs, or web logs, became the most prevalent type of personal web site around 1999 with the advent of personal publishing tools that made things one-click simple. People didn’t have to know any HTML any more to create personal sites. They didn’t even need to have their own domain. They just needed a web browser, an Internet connection, and some way to hit the keys.
After the attacks on the Pentagon and New York City’s World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, blogs were increasingly scrutinised, both individually and as a phenomenon. The media had paid attention before this event — but this event, with myriad personalised reports and op-ed pieces, kicked up the interest and the focus. Blogs were suddenly not merely “hip”, but “a vital force in personal journalism that can no longer be ignored.”
Dateline: 13 September 2002. The Los Angeles Times (which has a nasty habit of losing its news pieces days after publication) does a piece called “Crashing the Blog Party” where it makes a case for the mundanisation of blogging. Berkeley’s School of Journalism offered classes in blogging as a journalistic form, beginning with the Fall 2002 semester. The Oxford English Dictionary is seriously pondering adding the word “blog” to its next edition. The article included quotes from bloggers decrying the end of so-called real blogs, and the co-opting of the form by the academia and the establishment.
Oh, puh-leeze.
The Internet started out as the playground of the United States Military. It was created to be an unbreakable means of communication should there be a nuclear disaster. Then academia began using the fledgling Internet. It grew and grew (or some might say “metastised”) to include online shopping, news, political sites, personal sites, the whole gamut. This latest whinging is nothing but the carpings of the elite who now see their Sekrit Klub being invaded.
Blogs have never been especially groundbreaking, except that they give more people the opportunity to speak, and more people the opportunity to listen (or ignore). Just as online shopping (or porn) did not completely take over the Internet, journalists will never completely overtake the Internet. There will be an initial flurry of attention, speculation, attempts, failures, and finally,
equilibrium. It?s a new way to reach people. Journalists are just as welcome to use the Internet as anyone else. It’s not as if we’re being forced to read them…and look at it this way: it will be that much more easy, and amusing, to ridicule the dumb ones who type before they think. The ones who write well, the ones who entertain, the ones who make us think…they’re welcome to join in. Always were.
So shut up and go back to blogging already.
Keywords: | communication | blogosphere |
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