> MSM = Mainstream Media.
>
> Railing against blogs due to a large number of sorry blogs is like
> railing against poetry due to a large number of sorry poems or against
> email due to a large number of sorry messages. Blogs are in part a
> genre and in part a medium (content-management system tools offered --
> often at no cost -- by commercial businesses). One doesn't rail
> against a genre or a medium just because a large majority of pieces
> produced in or through it are mediocre or worse. Technorati claims
> that it is "[c]urrently tracking 44.8 million sites and 2.6 billion
> links" -- probably, by now a majority of blogs are written in
> languages most LBO-talk subscribers can't read and therefore can't
> really evaluate.
>
one can rail against a medium if the medium isn't taken seriously or if
it is obsolete or lends itself to stupidity. blogging isn't a neutral
medium. does it lend it self to knee jerkism, source distorting and
ridiculous punditry? we can condemn infomercials can't we? why is most
poetry really bad? is it because it's obsolete as a medium? there's so
much bad poetry that the best poetry by definition would be poetry that
mocks poetry.... but hardly anyone does that. we can make assessments
of blogging. i think most blogging is goofy because it still relatively
new.. there's almost 0 tradition to draw from. not enough good examples
etc.... so that is a problem of the medium. also all the mediocre and
bad blogging, poetry whatever affects the medium. it's like stand up
comedy...50 bazillion bad stand up comics can ruin the medium to the
point where even good stand up comics aren't funny. so there are
problems.
~J