In the Agora: <i>Indianapolis Star</i> and the Blogging Phenomenon

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November 16, 2004

Indianapolis Star and the Blogging Phenomenon

The Indianapolis Star looks at the blogging phenomenon and talks with Hoosier bloggers including Josh, Lawren K. Mills, The Girl in Black, and, well, me.

The story does a good job of conveying the different uses of blogging. Like any format, blogging doesn't dictate message, although it does lend itself better to journaling, commenting, and discussing than most traditional media outlets. Try, for instance, having a conversation about an article that you find printed in the dead-tree copy of the Indianapolis Star. Oh, you can do it--but first you're going to have to find real people out there in "meatspace" who want to talk about the article, gather them in one place, and keep them there for the duration of the conversation. The costs to that conversation taking place are pretty high.

The article also gets to one of the points that has long interested me about blogging: That although the best-known blogs are either political or technical (with occasional cultural bloggers like Terry Teachout), most people just want to use their blogs to communicate with a few other people--mainly their friends. To use a cosmological metaphor, Daily Kos et al are the bright Cepheid stars of the blogging universe, while LiveJournals are dark matter. It's easier to see the influence of Kos, but the vast bulk of the blogging universe is quasi-hidden.

Sadly, at the end of the article, the reporter feels that it's necessary to ask if anyone is going to feel like reading all of those blogs (shortly, he says, they may become as ubiquitous as personal telephone numbers). It's easy to respect political bloggers like Josh Marshall because they have real sources and an agenda for what they write; similarly, academic blogs like Crooked Timber are souped-up and more enjoyable versions of op-ed pages (admixed with commentary on political theory). But it's not so easy to respect people who just want to let their friends know that they say The Incredibles last night and OMG it was really kewl.

Does this discredit blogs? Hardly. Most people don't write for respect. They write because it's fun, and because they want to express themselves. People read these blogs because it is interesting to know what your friends are doing, and your interest is proportional to the strength of your friendship. Is a blog with four or five readers a failure? Not necessarily, nor is a blog with a hundred thousand readers a day a success. It all depends on the standards and goals the blog's author sets, and the interests that her readers have.

Addendum: One common misapprehension about blogs is that they seek to replace Old Media, and that's it. The relationship between Old and New Media is more complicated than that. New Media usually does not have the same resources that Old has to cover stories; as this DefenseTech post notes, most blogging is content-light. Yet, as Andrew Sullivan notes in this gracious post introducing ITA to the blogging community, blogs are increasingly serving the purpose that political magazines used to by bringing together like-minded people to comment on and analyse pressing topics. (Perhaps that's why the idea-based Old Media like Reason, TNR, National Review, American Prospect, and Washington Monthly are putting more of their content on the web via blogs.)

It's deeper than that, though.

The shift from dead-tree to blogging means that people are not only replacing newspaper and television information with blogs, but also that people expect different things from their news sources (including, famoously, pictures of the author's cats). If there is a replacement effect, then, it's not a direct substitution, but something more subtle--more akin to how the shift toward using cellphones has changed our perception of what a phone should be (digital camera? email? why not!).

Among the effects of this shift is one for which there's no real analogue in the dead-tree form of media: the sense of community. The barriers between Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit, Reason, and Kevin Drum are not as steep as those between Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. All of the bloggers who are in a given community share a sense of purpose and togetherness that can, at times, make it feel like one newsroom operating under different names. (The very existence of the word "blogosphere" points to this, although the sense of community is far, far less than it was when Josh and I started blogging in March 2002.)

Further, one of the strengths of the blogosphere is how its open nature allows different writers to "jam" together, and that's what I'm hoping ITA will end up being: The greatest policy dork jam session ever.

Another effect of the shift is the intense navel-gazing that seems to be inherent in the act of blogging.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at November 16, 2004 05:15 AM

Comments

"The greatest policy dork jam session ever."

Now there's a great subtitle for a blog!

Posted by: Eric Seymour at November 16, 2004 11:00 AM | permalink

Yup, got your site from the Andrew Sullivan link. Nice blog you got here. I love your views in this entry about the blogsphere as well, really hit the nail on the head.

I noticed you mention Indiana a lot, so I take it this is where you are based out of. This is another phenomenom of localized blogs, delivering content by region, instead of just nationalized. This is a great idea. Especially because there really is no outlet to get information about local politics besides the local paper. That paper might not be sufficient, at least not for us civics geeks. I think I've just been mildly inspired to set up a new section of my blog for my region, Boston, MA.

Anyway, keep up the excellent work!

Posted by: Adrock at November 16, 2004 01:02 PM | permalink

Most people don't write for respect. They write because it's fun, and because they want to express themselves.

hear, hear. i'm not in it to exchange hot sexy links with political bloggers. i just want to take pictures of cats [except i don't actually take pictures of cats since i don't own one, but you know what i mean]. if other people find my 'pictures of cats' interesting, feel free to stick around. if not, there are always other 'pictures of cats' to look at, if you know what i mean.

Posted by: Josette at November 16, 2004 06:11 PM | permalink