 1.
The Blog is a Journal, and Online Journalism is Our Game:
'Journal' is a very inclusive term, and broadly means 'daily writings',
and journalists are therefore those who write (or photograph) daily. A
diary is a journal, and so is a distinguished medical publication
(though the latter is often a monthly, and hence more accurately an
anthology or review). So everyone from the author of minutiae of a
teenager's life written for a handful of friends, to a prolific daily
poster of articles read by thousands, is an online
journalist. That's what blogging
is, and to attempt to categorize it or restrict it or define it more
narrowly is to miss the point. Our tradition goes back centuries, from
the writers of regular letters to the poets who wrote from the bunkers
of wars to the pamphleteers whose work was critical to the emergence of
democracy around the world, we are all journalists, pure and simple daily
writers. The fact that our
writing is online makes it more accessible but that is all. It is no
new phenomenon or quantum leap, merely the rediscovery by many of the
joy of composing paragraphs of fact and fiction and sharing them with
others.
2.
We Are Our Own Content Providers, and
3. Content Has Value Only in Use:
The Mainstream Media (which some writers are now calling the 'legacy
media'
have this arrogant view (reinforced in a recent Atlantic Magazine
article, ironically available only to print subscribers) that they are
the font of all news, and that the blogosphere
would 'have nothing to talk about' if it weren't for them. Such a
luddite perception of the entire online community (not just bloggers)
explains why these media are losing audience, making 'Rather'
unnecessary mistakes, and failing to partner with online journalists
and researchers. My diagram above illustrates their strange POV. In
reality, legacy and online journalists both
use a combination of
information sourced outside and their own primary and secondary
research and analysis, both
write stories based on those content
sources, and both
use a mechanism to add value to the content called
'journalism' of varying degrees of quality. And online journalists go
two better: Unlike the legacy media, they can use The
Power of Many to quickly add to,
clarify, and when necessary correct mistakes (Britt Blaser calls this recursive
journalism).
And unlike the legacy media, online journalists have the numbers and
front-line perspective to provide a much more personal context than
more remote reporters. That's important because news only has value if
it's useful, not just merely
entertaining. News and other 'information' that is unactionable, which
has no impact on what we do with our lives, is merely distraction.
Bloggers are just beginning to learn that by providing unique local
content (facts and perspectives) they can help the citizen-reader
answer the question that the legacy media can't, or won't: What
do we do about this?
4.
The Content Management Challenge:
For all of us on this side of the digital divide, organizing and
finding information on our own hard drives and on our blogs is a
growing and momentous challenge. For the hard drive, Google Desktop and
its imitators are a new, first step. For many bloggers, their posts are
ephemeral, and neither they nor their readers really care whether
they're lost in the ether, or whether they're even available once they
drop into the archives. But an increasing number of bloggers are adding
original content or perspective with enduring
value, and both they and their readers want it to stick around and be
easy to find. Google searches are hit-and-miss. Tagging,
assigning your own keywords to content using your own taxonomy, may be
an improvement. But ultimately bloggers will face the same challenge as
mainstream journalists, librarians, archivists, and anyone with a
filing cabinet or a MyDocuments folder: How
do I index, sort, organize and
present all this stuff in a way in which I, and others I trust, can
both browse it and
search it? Even non-bloggers, who have taken to using shareable 'social
bookmarking' tools like del.icio.us
are now facing this content management problem.
5.
It's All About What The Big Media Aren't
Talking About:
All information has spin.
The 2004 elections in the US and elsewhere made it clear that the
mainstream media, and bloggers, all have a bias in what they present,
and, more importantly, what
they don't
present. It is no coincidence
that when citizens are asked what the most important issues of the time
are, they mostly parrot what the mainstream media are reporting on. For
those on the other side of the digital divide, they don't really have a
choice -- other than person-to-person conversations, they have no way
to get information on the things that are important to them personally
that the mainstream media don't cover. In fact they often don't even
think about these as political
issues. When Gallup gives people the ten choices of issues to pick the
'most important' from, citizens tend to pick the one on the list that
they relate to most personally -- with unemployment, health care and
education usually topping the list. But even in the very rare cases
when issues like the environment, peace and civil liberties are raised
in these surveys, they are described using these abstract and
impersonal terms, rather than terms like 'clean air, water and food',
'resolving conflicts peacefully', 'workplace safety', 'safe, affordable
quality schools' and 'protecting privacy & other personal
freedoms'. So because these hard-to-capture-on-video issues aren't
mentioned in surveys of the masses, the mainstream media are vindicated
for continuing to ignore them, and the vicious cycle of ignorance is
complete. This, of course, is where bloggers come in, to fill the void.
Maybe that's why the mainstream media are trying to pre-discredit us as
'a
million guys in pajamas'.
6.
Blogs' as Echo Chambers, or Not:
The failure of the left side of the blogosphere to see that Dean would
lose the primary, and that Kerry would lose the election, led many
to see the blogosphere as an echo chamber, where like minds (falsely)
reassured like minds. But guys like Dave Weinberger disagree,
and point
out that compared to the
mainstream media, or the cloister that filters news for the US Presnit,
blogs are pretty open-minded. Does the blogosphere open up people to
new ideas or solidify what they already believe and close them off from
other points of view? I've argued
that people tend to make up their minds once on each issue, and then
look for reassurance and only change their initial opinion when they
directly experience first-hand
conflicting evidence. So blogs can be helpful in allowing people to
make up their minds in the first place, and, as long as they are
critical thinkers, giving them reassurance that supports those views.
Nothing wrong with that. And just because blogs aren't likely to change
many minds (written material rarely does by itself) and may allow
non-critical thinkers to go on believing foolish things (kinda like Fox
News), doesn't invalidate their benefits.
7.
Bloggers' Need to Get Out and Investigate More:
The most important kind of journalism, the kind that brings real
change, is investigative journalism. Blogging is perfectly
suited to this challenge,
because it requires people out in the community to invest significant
personal time and energy in things they care about (since it incurs
risks, and pays poorly). The mainstream media have curtained
investigative journalism for that reason (libel suits and expensive
research budgets don't impress media conglomerates' shareholders).
There are some fledgling
groups trying to organize
bloggers as investigative journalists. They are not cowed by the
harrowing experiences of the courageous journalists in Into
the Buzzsaw. But in order to
provide this value, bloggers need to get away from their comfortable
computers and do some things that, to many, will be very uncomfortable:
Getting first-hand accounts and taking photos of unpleasant things in
unpleasant places, writing up exposes that will incite the wrath of the
rich and powerful (and their lawyers), doggedly pursuing the truth in
the face of lies, evasion, and bureaucracy. It's a lot harder than
sitting and writing about things second-hand, but if we are to be
credible, it's vital.
8.
Information Is Still Trying to be Free, and Keeping Journalists Poor:
Marshall McLuhan's deliberately ambiguous statement "Information is
always trying to be free" is great news for the consumers of content,
but bad news for those who try to make a living from it. Freelance
journalists have been starving for generations, and blogging has
created thousands of online journalists with a secret desire to make a
living from writing. It's a classical case of a business with low
entrance barriers and not even Shirky's Power Law, which would suggest
A-list bloggers with a wildly disproportionate share of readers should
be able to make a buck from writing, has made it easier. Several recent
articles have suggested that blogging is poised to make a breakthrough
to profitability, but I'm skeptical -- with so much information
available for free, why would anyone in their right mind pay for it?
And the argument that advertising will make the difference, that
companies will pay for eyeballs, especially if they're in their 'target
demographic' are equally uncompelling, because 'broadcast' advertising
is anathema to the whole idea of the Internet where everything is
customized and one-to-one. If bloggers really want to make money,
they're going to have to do it face-to-face with people who are
impressed with their writing, and follow the advice of successful
consultants: Give content (ideas, surveys, stories) away
free, and charge for the
add-ons, for effectively implementing them for the customer. As Seth
Godin and Malcolm Gladwell can tell you, that's where the value is.
9.
The Silence of the Web as Negative Assurance:
Dave Weinberger explains why, in the absence of much positive evidence,
he's inclined to believe that Bush was wired for the first debate with
Kerry because despite everyone talking about the story on the
blogosphere there were no plausible other explanations for the bulge.
It's the same logic that led intelligent people to 'know' the
unknowable -- that there were no WMD in Iraq. In professional auditing
circles it's called 'negative assurance', and it means that sometimes
you believe what you do in the absence of any compelling evidence to
the contrary, if a lot of people have had the opportunity to proffer
such contrary evidence. Auditors send out letters of 'negative
confirmation' of account balances to their clients' customers with the
request that they be returned with corrections only if they're
incorrect. This is not as comforting as 'positive confirmations' where
a written, signed response is required of each customer, but it's much
better than nothing, and usually very effective. So the vast
blogosphere provides negative assurance of facts and declarations made
by politicians and other vested interests, in the absence of any
compelling contrary evidence from bloggers who would be positively
disposed to tabling such information if it existed. Further evidence of
the Wisdom of Crowds, and comforting in places where the media tend to
treat press conferences and press releases as 'facts' needing no
corroboration, question or inquiry.
10. The Ultimate Utility of Blogging: Last, but certainly not least, is
this remarkable statement from blogger Rob Paterson on the utility of
blogging:
"The
utility of blogging to me is that it is recreating the lost world of a
humanity that is connected to itself and hence to everything." Rob and
I and a group of bloggers have been working on a compendium of our best
and most important work, and we've been exchanging ideas on a theme or
shared vision for the book. I suggested that, if it's going to sell,
the book needs to have utility to the reader, especially the reader who
barely knows what a blog (or online journalism) is. Rob identified
three 'values' of blogging to him personally: Finding
one's voice; Noticing what gives and what drains one's energy;
Redefining the meaning of work as a function of community and
fellowship instead of wage slavery. So he's saying, and I agree with him, that blogging (the participation in the conversation as
both a journal reader and writer) re-centres you, frees you from being
like, and seeing the world like, everyone else, and allows you to see
the world and yourself differently, more profoundly (for better and
for worse), and hence to liberate yourself and take charge of your own
life. Self-awareness, self-reliance, and the personal liberation that
comes from deep knowledge. Could there possibly be a higher utility for
anything?
Coming up later this month: My Ten
Most Important Ideas lists
for politics & economics, and for business.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
