Sorry, Another Blog About Blogging

There is these things that keeps swirling round the blogosphere;

namely:-

1. That blogging is the new journalism,

2. It's a democratisation of speech.

3. It will change the way we interact, relate and converse with each other.

1. Nonsense it isn't if there are 1,000,000 bloggers in the UK the number of people in Britain reading blogs will be 1,000,500. We are talking to ourselves, we haven't broken big stories, if our opinions are noted it will be one or two bloggers or blog sites and they are noted by an incredibly small number of people compared to traditional mass media. I could go into work on Monday and list the winners of the 2005 bloggies, Dooce, Wonkette, Boing Boing, Tom Coates to members of the group I work in (~ 140 members) and I would be very surprised if more than 2 or 3 of them would recognise the names if any of them. If I was to list Richard Norton Taylor, Robert Fisk, Boris Johnson I would get a far better recognition rate. What we bloggers are is a resource to journalists who are too lazy to leave the office or don't have the expense account to fund the bus ticket. A few journalists do look at what is floating about in the ether but we bloggers do not break stories.

Don't get me started on bias and fact checking, newspapers are bad enough and they run the risk of being taken to court and need to keep some resemblance of being honest brokers. Most bloggers do not have the resources to fact check properly most of us, me included, are not trained journalists I have never been formally taught the difference between reporting information and commentary.

I would put at best we are the comment pieces, the columnists of the internet, though probably we are really the Polly Fillers and Dave Sparts.

2. Democratisation of Speech - Yeah I'll go with that but who is listening, "if no one reads your blog does it exist?"

3. Changing the way we relate - Now this is true but blogging is a niche activity although it has a profound effect on my life :-D we are the exception not the norm. Most people though will still use the internet for less permanent "conversations" messenging, using chat rooms, forums.

I think the blog is a wonderful thing but its impact is overstated it is important to those of us who blog and enjoy it but to those who don't they are not missing out.

Becky summed it up very neatly here