John Scalzi reflects on how the blogosphere has changed and not changed in a few years:
The composition of the blog population is tremendously more diverse than any other previous iteration of online community, and many if not most of the truly prominent bloggers are professional people who write about what they know, not just what they think about what they think they know. So you have lawyers discussing law, economists discussing the economy, writers discussing writing, so on and so forth. They all also write about whatever else they want – i.e., they’re as happy to spout off beyond their area of expertise as any the rest of us poor schmoes – but the point to make here is that these personalized sites are no longer simply “amateur”; there are enough people in enough fields writing in blogs that you can look to the blog world as a resource to understanding the real world, not merely a place that is reacting to it. And that’s mostly new and mostly useful.
Yes, what thousands of people are now building is an extraordinary new resource for understanding the world. It won’t replace traditional media. But it will be an exhilarating fresh and open supplement.
The Dish 