A British reader writes:
Just some notes from the UK
– Thur 6 pm news BBC, only about a minute’s coverage on the demonstration!!
– Wed 7 pm news Ch 4, a postive headline about Bushs speech!!
– General, lots of people in the media condemning the demonstrations!!
– Dinner party at mine Wed night, room fell silent when Bush spoke followed by applause!
I think the visit has gone down pretty well!
What a difference al Qaeda makes.
ARE BLOGS OVER? Reading this particularly bitter-sounding piece, I’d say not. John Dvorak’s argument that many blogs don’t pan out and people can’t keep it up is obvious. When you have 4 million blogs, of course you’re going to have people fade out. It’s tough. And then Dvorak concedes: ” Luckily for the blogging community, there is still evidence that the growth rate is faster than the abandonment rate. But growth eventually stops.” What can that mean? That eventually we’ll reach a stable number of blogs, as the market is finally saturated? And that’s failure … why? Then Dvorak claims that blogs by professional writers are somehow “scams.” Here’s his brilliant insight:
They have essentially suckered thousands of newbies, mavens, and just plain folk into blogging, solely to get return links in the form of the blogrolls and citations. This is, in fact, a remarkably slick grassroots marketing scheme that is in many ways awesome, albeit insincere.
Unfortunately, at some point, people will realize they’ve been used. This will happen sooner rather than later, since many mainstream publishers now see the opportunity for exploitation. Thus you find professionally written and edited faux blogs appearing on MSNBC’s site, the Washington Post site, and elsewhere. This seems to be where blogging is headed-Big Media. So much for the independent thinking and reporting that are supposed to earmark blog journalism.
Suckered? No one who writes a blog has been suckered into it. They do it because it’s fun and if it ceases to be fun, they might stop. What’s so hard to understand about that? And there is a distinction between writing blogs and reading them. Many more will read than write – and that’s where much of the growth is, which is why Big Media will of course want to shift its strategy online to bring blogging to the mainstream. And this is … failure? Mickey Kaus, for example, is paid by Microsoft. Does that mean his blog is somehow less valid than mine, because mine is directly supported by readers? None of this rant makes any sense to me. Except some guy who’s bitter that plenty of amateurs now have the kind of access to readers he used to have as a monopoly. Three words: get over it.
The Dish 