The blogosphere’s NOT dead, Mr. Carr

Nicholas Carr’s post Who Killed the Blogosphere is stirring up the dust in the community the title claims is dead. (I love irony. )

Personally, I love Nicholas Carr’s blog: Rough Type.  But, it doesn’t really matter my opinion. Thousands of folks in the blogosphere ( already Zombies because they, we, don’t know that we’re already dead. We’re not the walking dead. We’re the blogging dead...His posts merely feeding our illusion of life among the living...(Ok, ok, I’m having fun.) like his work. His blog (just pounding the irony here) popular in the blogosphere is well-written, crisp, clear and articulates challenges for the rest of us, challenges we should heed.

But on this one...maybe...Mr. Carr’s missed the point. Or, I’m seeing the now dead blogosphere through the eyes of one dead member who doesn’t know he’s dead and is too dead to know it.

I’ve already touched on the irony of blogging that the blogosphere is dead.  Using the medium that you say is dead to propagate your announcement to other users of that same medium is...rich in irony.  For me, it’s too rich to ignore. It’s the proverbial low-hanging fruit.

The first irony is the reference to a story in The Economist, who writes:

Blogging has entered the mainstream, which - as with every new medium in history - looks to its pioneers suspiciously like death.

Now, with all due respects to The Economist, a mainstream mag I enjoy on airplanes when my laptop batteries are dead,  I think their predicting the imminent demise of the blogosphere is at best questionable when until recently they poo-poo’d, lampooned, and only reluctantly embraced the blogosphere they now say is dead.  Actually, they report others, blogging’s pioneers, that  say  the blogosphere is dead....Frankly, I don’t see blogging’s pioneers and the editors of The Economist running in the same social circles. Maybe, I’m wrong. So, then who are the off-the-record, unattributable sources, The Economist claims are pioneers of blogging?

It may be Mr. Carr is really writing a challenge to the blogosphere, by making dramatic proclamations of absolute truths of its demise, but based on skimpy data. I’m guilty of it, at times. (But, I’m a blogger, too...) And I try to mention that I don’t have time to link to all the research supporting my claim.

But this, from Mr. Carr, seemed to go beyond that:

Almost all of the popular blogs today are commercial ventures with teams of writers, aggressive ad-sales operations, bloated sites, and strategies of self-linking. Some are good, some are boring, but to argue that they're part of a "blogosphere" that is distinguishable from the "mainstream media" seems more and more like an act of nostalgia, if not self-delusion.

Almost all of the popular, Mr. Carr? Whose definition? Yours?

The next points, for me, are the most glaring contradictions. And it’s why they stayed in my head rumbling around until without caffeine they required expression.

Teams of writers. Yes, Mr. Carr, you are correct. Yes, it’s a virtual flood of teeming masses of writers and authors and crazy, passionate, smart people who’ve found a way to have their voice be heard by those who want to hear their voice.

And along the way, teems  of opportunities have been created for new ideas and new innovations and new communities to build their own media outlets, writing their content, under their rules for their communities. (How dare they?!?) And yes, they've indulged in the demon drink of making money.  (OMG!). THOSE people are writing and thinking together and creating bloated sites of content that is so compelling they are now...popular. And, gasp, they're making money. Oh, the horrors, Colonel Kurtz.

Popularity and money are the currency of the blogosphere even when done in styles and amounts and means we don’t necessarily agree with. That’s the power and challenge of citizen democracy. Like democracy, it’s messy. For the blogosphere that translates into messy sites, bloated with teams of writers and ads, an ever-shifting scenario of who’s popular and why, using what resources and when.

And like democracy, it’s the worst, except for every other option. Been to China, lately?

And now we have a plethora of choices ( I miss Howard Cosell...) where we can find content compelling to us, not to mainstream media and its sponsors, that offer solutions for us and help us reach our goals.

It’s called citizen journalism. The key here is that citizens can now create the content WE want to create or consume, in a manner we want to create and consume, and if we want to create and consume.   

And we have resources now to  follow the audience and focus on giving them content they want...with stats and feeds and reports to say...wow, 500 people read my post. Wow. 2 people have subscribed to me. Wow. A community wants me to join their team of writers. I can add to their solutions...AND THEY TO MINE!

And together we can create better solutions, even if it’s just better writing. Or maybe we’ll help us and thousands of strangers articulate our vision. And find another team that shares that vision.

Blogs aren’t abandoned because they’re so many blogs. Blogs are created because they’re so many.... VOICES! And so many voices have so many motivations and schedules and time demands for writing. The point isn’t that so many have been abandoned. The point is that so many are being created and maintained. And blogging is only now reaching many countries, some are so threatened by the idea of citizen journalism they already are trying to squash its access for their citizens. That’s a sign that the blogosphere is not dead.

It’s only changing. 

The personality of many blogs has changed. Yes, you’re correct. They grow with their authors. They grow quickly now. They mature and change and lose focus and regain focus and go on tilt and right themselves. And yes, some blogs, like some personalities, get bloated with importance and fame and followers. Blogs accurately reflect the personality of their authors/owners.

We may not like that reflection. We may disdain it, dismiss it, deride it, deny it when it's ours... But the power of blogging is its ability to create and recreate itself and reflect the personality of its authors. And do it quickly.

And look how quickly it’s being done. And isn’t that great!

Look at those popular blogs and their impact on the election. Look how quickly they covered important stories overlooked by the medium you say they’re emulating. those popular blogs showed the mainstream media where the audience was and what they wanted. What they wanted was important. The they in this conversation was the American voter, us, you, me. And too often the mainstream media turned to the blogosphere to find out. 

And next election, they’re will be even more. They’ll be different and have different personalities and use different resources.  And some of today’s popular blogs will die from their own bloat and disconnect from their audience. Ok, so in that respect they are like mainstream media...and families and businesses and communities and industries and nations and political parties. 

You use the example of radio stations and their growth into corporate-owned entitied broadcasting a bland stream unrecognizable from one station to another.

Radio soon came to be dominated by a relatively small number of media companies, with the most popular amateur operators being hired on as radio personalities. Social production was absorbed into corporate production.

You’re right again. But you fail to see the response of the blogosphere to create/use/incorporate resources like podcasts, BlogTalk Radio, Blip.fm, Pandora Radio, and even Typepad incorporating podcasts into its posting abilities.

It’s an excellent article.  Excellent articles inspire, incite, reactions and responses. And Mr. Carr’s prepared some data to support his thesis. And the great thing about his post is that it’s on the internet, available to the walking-dead of the blogosphere to respond. I hope they do. But even if they don’t, it will still go on thriving, changing, growing, dying, being reborn, generating outrage, generating surprise and delight and hope and solutions, and inspiration.

I’m not sure which response is better for Mr. Carr and those like The Economist.

I can’t help wondering if Mr. Carr hasn’t risked claiming for himself the same role of media/blogosphere pundit that The Economist claims for itself.    At the time of their appointment, they’re experts on top of their game. But as we see with mainstream media pundits too often the pace of change passes them by quickly and no one notices. Certainly, that’s not the case with Mr. Carr. But positioning oneself as an oracle of medium you’re not in control of...runs that same risk.

Comments

[Michael E. Rubin, Blog Council]

Well said, Zane.