Blogging and the Evolution of the Media

Simon Dumenco thinks that all the distinctions between blogging and the mainstream media are hooey. With the 24-hour news cycle and RSS feeds for most newspaper sites - Dumenco argues - all that separates bloggers from regular old writers is a cooler name.

It’s a lot more than just a cool name. As Shel Israel said in our recent podcast interview, bloggers will never replace, or meld into the mainstream media. Nobody could put a CNN reporter aboard Alaska Flight 536, and there are very few bloggers who will ever be put on location in a war zone.

What Dumenco is right about is that the architecture that is now generated by such blogging engines as Movable Type and Wordpress will eventually be so ubiquitously intertwined with all Web platforms - especially those used for newspaper websites - that mainstream media and the blogosphere will be indistinguishable.

But his interpretation of that change is way off base. He confuses evolutions in technology with evolutions in perspective and content. No matter how much blog architecture becomes a part of the mainstream Web, there will be no equivalency on those fronts. Journalists will still have huge news organizations that send them on location, edit their work before it is published, and give them health insurance. Their writing may appear on the Web, but it will still be delivered to people’s doors on rolled up sheets of newsprint. Bloggers will still be Web-based freelancers who sell ad space for a living or else hold down other jobs. Their work will be edited and fact checked by the blogosphere after it is published.

I don’t see these distinctions changing. The lines may blur, but I predict that 30 years from now, bloggers and journalists will still be separate entities.