Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Michael D. Thomas" <mdthomas AT mindspring.com>]

>I keep hearing that Blogs are going to change the face of journalism, rahrahrah and all that.

I see large traditional outlets always providing the play-by-play, whereas bloggers (as defined in the org. article) add color commentary.

 

The opportunity for bloggers isn't to subvert CNN, NYT or N&O, but to work against what Marx called "false consciousness" -- the concept also popular with conspiracy theorists that the "Ruling Class" controls what we think and believe.

 

(Though a lot of Marxist theories have been proven unsound over time, I find Marxist thinking about mass media particularly applicable in light of the new cost structures enabled by Internet technologies.)

Bloggers don't subvert traditional journalism. Bloggers don't have access to White House press conferences, or a Middle East desk. Though some bloggers may be close to some of the news events some of the time, news consumers need credibility that bloggers can't easily provide. Credibility isn't generated well by a de-centralized model -- "is this email really a report from the front line, or is it just another Internet hoax?"

 

On one level, credibility is a function of brand. Most people assume that what CNN is telling us is, at least, factually correct and free of bias -- i.e., 'news.' The CNN brand is best served if people continue to consider it a source of news.  So on the brand management side, credibility is best managed with a centralized and human editorial process vested in the continuation of that credibility and trust of the audience. (Fox News, on the other hand, seems to have an altogether different brand management strategy. It will be interesting to see how that works out.)
 
Commentary/interpretation can be done by anyone, and is -- over dinner, at the bar, in the park, etc. Blogging makes it very easy and inexpensive to pontificate to a large audience. The opportunity for the bloggers is thus idealogical: to work against Marx's "false consciousness" that is created by one-way (1xN) mass media that is controlled by a relative few. To quote Marx:

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. the class, which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production..."

 

With blogging and other Internet technologies, the "means of mental production" are quite cheap. But setting up a blogger doesn't automagically win someone an audience, influence, or anything else. (Nor does it make them 'unbiased' -- I can't think of anything that removes bias from someone's work other than rigorous process and language, such as the scientific method and mathematics.)

 

Individual bloggers have an idealogical effect to the degree that they are perceived to be credible and interesting to an audience and to the degree that the audience can grow. I.e., blogging exists in a context with its own rules -- for-profit or not, professional or not. Conspiracy theorists who love to postulate about the plotting and conniving of elites will be bored -- the context of blogging is perhaps best considered in the context of network theory.

 

Instead of a 1xN model it is a MxN model, where M<N and M=number of bloggers. But each of those N readers can't regularly read an arbitrary M blogs. While N is essentially unbounded, M is bounded by several overlapping dyamics rooted in human nature. Thus, the 10% "Good Blogs" proposed earlier...

 

Or, to put it more simply: In a world where anyone can speak to you, who do you listen to? In a world where everyone is speaking at once, *how* do you lock in to a particular voice and listen to it?

And to that end, one can look at the "Power Rule" which states that web sites that are more linked tend to become even more linked and thus more accessed and more accessible. More on this finding:

http://modelingtheweb.com/

 ....and that will determine the 10%. They will be the bloggers that continue to get the most important ingredient: the energies of their developers inspired by connections with others.