Blogs v Media

On NPR this morning, there was a pretty good discussion on (for the 10 minutes I heard) the media, and the role of blogs/internet news. There was lots of simplistic discussion a la "Is this the end of new media?" etc...but what got me thinking was how blogs are the next progression in distributed information. Think about the web 7-10 years ago, there was very little commercial content, and it was all people's personal hobbies, educational institutions, etc...Then the dot.com/e-vendor model got dialed and the web-space was overrun by commercial interests. Ok, yes that was an over simplification, but really it is harder to find the arcane knowledge on the web now, and most of what I come across seems to have been abandoned in 1998 or '99. There were warnings for years about the commercialization of the web, and the loss of the "digital-commons" as if once it went commercial, then no one would be able to express themselves free of undue corporate influence again.

But what people (myself included) fail to remember, is that corporations are hesitant, and slow to adopt new forms of communications. It took them years to figure out web-pages. People can move much faster and are much more flexible in terms of communication, so forums and blogs have risen up to fill the loss of the static webpage. I think it's an improvement, as blogs and forums are much better forms for communicaiton between people as opposed to creating a standard-html-static-no-feedback web page. It becomes a dialogue, instead of a monologue.

It appears, that corporations are figuring out how to market in forums and review sites (pay people to type really good product reviews), but they don't own the channel of informtaion (as they do with TV/Radio/Print. That's pretty cool.

Is media dead? Hell no, and it shouldn't be. But it would be nice if journalists went back to being fact checkers, and critical thinkers, as opposed to 'reporters.' Have you ever listened to a BBC interview? They are so much tougher than the hardest hitting journalist in the States, it's stunning.

Anyway, no real point, but this is what is in my brain this morning.