Strangers in a Blog World

I’m only in my second week as a blogger, and it remains a strange and mysterious place for me. Stu Svenson , brother of uber-blogger Ernie the Attorney captures many of my thoughts in his first blog today. I agree with all of Stu’s pithy observations except one. He speculates that mainstream writers may be disdainful of bloggers because blogs are often poorly edited. That’s a good point, but in fact, many of the most prolific and respected bloggers are professional journalits like Dan Gillmor , JD Lasica and David Weinberger .

Blogging answers the prayers of most journalists: How do I get pass that (expletive deleted,) dull, cautious editor with what I’ve written? Editors,on the other hand, might disdain blogs, because in traditional publishing, they serve as the guardians of accuracy. What's easy for them to miss is that the blogging community is a tech-enabled Vigilante Committee when it comes to accuracy. However, the blogging community is phenomenal for keeping its members accurate.

I was a CityRoom reporter for 11 years, many years ago. It doesn't seem to have changed much except the old Underwood Typewriters have been replaced with PCs. Blogging is very duifferent. I get to publish whenever I wish. I set my own deadlines. No one in bloggery is going to be forced to write pap about an advertiser's Holiday Party. For journalists, blogging liberates, but that's not the really big thing.

The biggest difference is in the cooperation. Bloggers support and promote each other. Traditional journalism is surprisinglycompetitive. Each media outlet competes with the other to get news first. Each traditional reporter competes withco-staffers for bylines and the limited space on each front page.

I've been surprised by the incredibly kind things other bloggers have written about me, linking their readers to my work. There is great power in this new collaboration. In a sense, we are one great blog-- a collective always-on service of news, commentary, analysis and features.

Blogging faces the same two fundamental questions of any new technology phenomena: (1) How does it get monetized, and (2) Should it get monetized.

In any case, Stu, welcome to the wonderful world of blogging, from a veteran of 11 days.

Comments

[Stu Svenson]

Thanks Shel. I actually started blogging a couple of weeks ago too. This is my second comment on blogging. Perhaps you will also appreciate the first one.

http://stusvenson.typepad.com/it_and_performan/2003/11/16/index.html

(Nov. 16 on my Blog)

[Jonathan]

There are also some prominent polibloggers such as Josh Marshall and Tom Tomorrow. It's interesting how blogging is reshaping politics.