Blogging about an article about blogging
Babble on.
You could burn out a couple computer monitors scrolling through all the pixels devoted to introspective blogging about the influence, the advantages, the drawbacks, the evolution, and the future of the blogosphere. This sort of navel-gazing is exceptionally difficult to do with any real insight given the rapidly-evolving nature of this medium; worse yet, it tends to get boring after awhile.
This is not to say that all writing on the subject is tedious or flimsy, as Peggy Noonan brilliantly proves in yesterday's WSJ Opinion Journal (nod to Penny). She lists seven core strengths of the political blogosphere, and explains why bloggers are actually performing a public service. She also wades into the Bloggers vs. The MSM melee and delivers the best one line rebuke to journalists whining about blogger scrutiny I've seen yet:
If you can't take it, you shouldn't be thinking aloud for a living.
The only issue I have with Ms. Noonan's piece is that she writes about blogging as if it's all political. Pundit blogging may be the most well-publicized segment of the blogosphere, but Flea's eclectic explorations of pop-culture are on track to bring him close to 3,000,000 page views this year. Blogcritics.org will get close to 5,000,000 unique visitors this year if people's mouse-clicking habits stay constant. Gawker pulled more visits last hour than I've seen in my best month, and their overall traffic is in the same range as InstaPundit. Most political bloggers I know can't even dream about that type of traffic.
I'd love to see any of the journalists who talk about blogging - as an ally, as a foe, or as a supposedly unbiased observer *snicker* - try the Blogger Navbar Drinking Game. I'm pretty sure their paradigms would get the spins even before they did.
Babble off.
Update: The Master of Castle Argghhh!!! also directs his readers' attention toward Noonan's remarks, and repeats a familiar military admonition to denizens of the MSM: "Adapt or die."
posted by Babbling Brooks @ 9:58 a.m.
4 comments
4 Comments:
Whooee! You ain't jest whistlin' Dixie when you sez that some o' these bigtime boogers is all runnin' round in circles lookin' at their own backsides. Outside o' polyticks, it looks like boogin' about boogin' is the biggest story in the boogeysphere.
Thankee kindly, Babblinfeller, fer linkin' t' them other boogs that ain't 'bout polyticks. Since them snooty-tooty fellers over t' that there Shotgun boog ain't makin' me none too welcome, I ain't readin' their big words an' I don't hafta look stuff up in Dick & Harry's big book o' words. Now, I got me some more time fer seein' what else is goin' in in the non-polyticks boogs.
Yores trooly,
JimBobby
Well, JimBobby, I've come visiting your site a few times now. I don't really think of myself as a "snooty-tooty feller" (although putting that last phrase in quotes seems like a real Niles Crane thing to do), but I have to say I find it a real effort to decipher what you're saying.
Of course, once I do that, what you're saying is generally interesting.
A-'course, mebbe yer readers ain't got no problem with how you sez things. Speakin' fer mesself, it's more of a deestrac-shun than anythin'. Does make you one-of-a-kind, I admits.
I'm a-gonna keep tryin' to read yer stuff, an' see if'n I can't get past the whole lang'wij thing - if I can, you gets a spot on my boogroll. Where, I dunno yet, but we c'n figger that out when we comes to it.
Whooee! Thankee kindly fer that, Damianfeller. I'll jest give a little o' my reasonin' fer writin' the way I do by way o' showing an example. Now, one o' my favourite singerfellers is Marshall Dillon's boy Bobby. Bobby Dillon wrote hisself a song away back when ol' JimBobby was jest young JimBobby an that song goes like this:
"Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'."
That's jest the first verse but you ken see the rest if you want at http://bobdylan.com/songs/times.html.
Now, jest think o' what it woulda sounded like like if ol' BobbyBoy hadda sed:
"Society is going through a period of transition and the citizenry must adapt to change" instead o' the way he did put it. That way might o' bin easier t' read but instead o' becomin' a bigtime star like he did, BobbyBoy'd still be playin' his mouth organ fer his kin once or twice a year at birthday parties.
Well, BabblinFeller, ol' JimBobby's aimin' become a bigtime booger here in the Canajun boogeysphere an' tellin' it like I' seein' it is how I aim t' do that. Ol' Kinsellerfeller left hisself a comment onta my boog an' sed he figgered it's hard work writin' the way I do an' I won't last six months but my ol' Pappy used say if it ain't hard work then it ain't worth workin' at. I hope you'll keep droppin' by an' readin' my little boog.
Yores trooly,
JimBobby
Touche. Yet another reason to visit.
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