Introduction / Welcome

I've always resented the idea of blogs, blogging, and the very sound of the word "blogosphere." I understand that with mainstream news agencies suffering from budget cutbacks, that it's more and more difficult to capture the "pulse of the populous" by simply talking to the man or the woman on the street. Paying attention to bloggers is an easy way out: armchair journalism for an armchair world. I have to ask where the legitimacy is in that process.

Giving recognition to a blog simply because it's visited often doesn't necessarily describe the person or people involved, nor does it describe the actual representativeness of the population sample. Traditional media's over-emphasis on blogs is as wicked as its over-emphasis on violent crime: despite its decline during the Clinton administration, violence was widely reported, giving the impression that more of it was going on than was in previous years (see the Journal of Communication, Mar '03). In television, the three traditional broadcast networks borrow independent journalists for overseas reports. In radio, so little is locally owned, most news comes from satellite services. In print, newspapers are owned by conglomerates and the norm is represented in USA Today, where a paragraph passes for a full story. Once upon a time, print media was the only place you could get the full details.

The true fallacy of all of this blogging is that it simply isn't news. In most cases, it's gossip, or—like mine—opinion pieces. "We report; you decide"? Hardly. Most of us have already decided; we just need someone to report the version we want to hear. The unfortunate consequence of having so much information at our fingertips is that we can more narrowly choose that which we receive.

Now, this may seem hypocritical to anyone reading this. "If you hate blogs so much, why do you have one?" My answer is that I've never tried it. I can't just say that it smells bad, I've got to taste it. We'll see how I feel down the road. As of right now, I'm reminded of the old reporter's question, "What's the poop?" and that's exactly what most of this blogging thing seems to be.