New Blog Squad Growing 2 Shake Up da Status Quo

A survey of the blogosphere landscape indicates that tevironment conditions are just right for the sudden sprouting of new blogs.

Jimena and Nacho (at jimeynacho.blogsome), who’ve been blogging since at least July ‘05, set Adan up with the basics to start blogging (at sapereaude.blogsome), and so he splashes onto the scene this week with a call for discussion on a Forbes article about… blogging.

After the tedious registration process for a free Forbes account I finally got through to the article he passes along: The attack of the blogs by Daniel Lyon.

I agree with Adan that an analysis of blogging makes for a fitting first wave of activity on any new blog. This article however I think is just ridiculously luddite and paranoid.

Is blogging journalism ? Should the same rights and responsibilities be conferred on bloggers ? Are conventional news outlets doomed ?
Questions like these pop up all the time when discussing blogs. But in the article these aren’t seriously addressed. On The attack of the blogs the author leans toward denying any journalistic validity to bloggers and has apparently no faith in any real contribution from them. (… us!)

It begins:

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

His article expounds on this shocking viewpoint, showing us why bloggers are evildoers terrorizing companies and some of their key executives.

Companies without a conscience are inevitably whining, after all, over months, years or decades they’ve invested shitloads carefully tailoring brand images and building P.R. propaganda machines to dominate consumers. It’s only natural that they’re going to feel threatened when they no longer have unchallenged control over mass-media. Their tangled webs of spinned news are no longer one-way messages delivered across corporate-interest media. Blogging enhances the power of the Internet to liberate previously dispersed voices to critique mainstream stories, verify the facts and instantly share alternate versions to the polished feel-good fables P.R. departments spin. Speaking up and being heard is easier now as blogging technology tears down obstacles that keep individuals apart.

When walls come down, visibility is greater. The pet peeves that quirky individuals kept to themselves because of the low diffussion of their niche interests now form the basis for online communities. In the information age people, not just companies, are mass media empowered. If brands want to retain their good reputations they’ll have to be more careful about all of their behavior unless they want their sins broadcast globally by decentralized think-tanks studying their every move. This inmense 24-hour, 365 days a year newsroom is evolving the capabilities to bring down companies and executives, and especially in these early years it will do so indiscriminately, breaking innocent public figures who haven’t acquired the savvy to come clean on the blogosphere witness stand and testify in their own defense.

Most celebrities have accepted that with their success comes fame (and infamy) and ruthless scrutiny. Politicians have always known to guard their public image. Increasingly we’ll all become public figures, our words and deeds will ever more comprehensively be recorded for posterity. Like celebrities we’ll all habituate to the scrutinous politics of image control and adopt better coping philosophies like “there’s no bad publicity”. Millions of high-schoolers blog daily and know first-hand about blog character assassination (in their case amplified by the power of instant messaging, cell phone texting and hallway gossipping). But none of them characterize blogging as a whole as a libelous medium or deny the benefits blogs bring. For kids growing with(in) the web, blogs are not only an essential space all of their own, they are a fact of life.

Rumors are necessary to an open society. This dynamic exchange between individuals is a healthy sign of democracy. In the beginning there is porn and sensationalism. They sell well. But smut and tabloid reporting only paves the way for better content and a maturing sophistication in the readers. If people want reliable information they’ll know better than to follow anonymous rumors on tabloid blogs.

It’s only a matter of time for society-at-large to acclimatize to the ecology of the blogosphere and demand quality. For trustworthy information users will eventually turn to established bloggers who’ve earned their reputation through an uncompromising journalistic work-ethos. They will be a threat to many companies and ‘public figures’ because they will dare explore where no corporate-paid journalist is allowed to go, and readers will believe them because they will have earned their trust.

There’s trouble in blogland, for sure. One of them is the rise of splogs, the blog equivalent to blogs, whose only purpose is to clog the web with phony blogs and advertise. These blogs pop up on search engines and distract us from real blogs but the biggest problem is they’ve started leaving ‘comments’ on real blogs.

Another situation in the blogworld is that with the present business model revenue means getting as many eyeballs and mouseclicks on embedded advertising. With noone to hold Joe Blogger accountable for fair, unbiased fact-checking, he can turn to demagogy and dishonesty, anything to hook more readers. But Joe Blogger can fuck up once or twice before he’s exposed and readers move on to more reliable bloggers. Any blogger can be demoted to crackpot at any time. The price of an unhealthy obsession with ratings is greater contempt for the truth. Journalists are committed to diffusing the truth and their day to day activities don’t constantly remind them of the importance of ratings and advertising, presumably they focus on truthful reporting and hope to be approved for publication. The blogger is reporter, editor and salesman all at once.

Independent blogging and journalism from news organizations are related disciplines that share some of the same goals and have different means of attaining them, the first will not replace the latter, but will eventually attain equal importance in citizens’ media.

Shouldn’t bloggers have the right to earn some of the same rights, privileges and responsibilities that journalists get ? How could ‘blogger’ become a title as legitimate as ‘journalist’?

Despite the alarmist cries on Lyon’s Forbes’ article, not all bloggers, not even most, are rumor-mill witch-hunting lynch mobs. Silencing blogs or filtering free spech is too high a price to protect sensitive brands from criticism that would exist with our without blogs but which, thanks to blogs, has a powerful voice to enfore its right to free spech. Blogging is a form of having private conversations out in public, and regulating these conversations amounts to censoring free spech between consenting parties.

Most bloggers don’t even care about creating momentum for social change. Most bloggers like to keep an open journal for friends and family to stay connected and updated on everday minutiae. Regulating blogs means regulating these communications as well.

Free* blogging is the new human right.

*”free as in ‘free spech’ not free as in ‘free beer’”

=Cogey Strangehill
strangehill@gmail.com