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About this site
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A new section on the emerging blogosphere that's edited by Hylton Jolliffe, the founder, editor and publisher of Corante who believes blogging's more than mere fad and that what will flow from it will have major implications for media, marketing, distributed thinking and business in general.
Please send any tips, suggestions or reactions to Hylton.
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CORANTE ON BLOGGING: In media res
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By Hylton Jolliffe
Sarah Lohnes shares some text from an article proposal she and her colleagues at Middlebury College put together about the use of blogs in education that's been accepted for publication: "Members of weblog communities enter into apprenticeships with one another that constantly enhance intelligence in knowledge spaces because the guiding principle is that we don't know everything so we are looking to 'the other' to complete us, and therefore complete the community." |
Donna Wentworth on the news that a domain name registry is bundling free blogging software into its service: "[It's]sorta like when you sign up for a checking account at Fleet bank, and they give you a foam-insulated travel mug." |
John Hiler on a panel discussion he and several other prominent bloggers spoke at that was attended by media execs: "[It] was a bit like having a bunch of hippies drive straight from Woodstock to Armonk - to address a bunch of executives at IBM. It was a pretty big culture clash... and us hippies didn't have a lot of useful case studies of how our peace-and-love blogging could help the Big Media Cos make money (while avoiding the much-dreaded libel lawsuits)." |
Peter Shoemaker on the future of business: "20th century business was about mass; 21st century business will be about micros... Some industries like entertainment, publishing, and financial services will be hit first, but eventually nearly every consumer-oriented business will have a clear and unwavering focus on the micros."
He concludes: "The micros are not optional, and can not be legislated into submission or ignored. The good news is they are derivatives of our history and our economy, and as such can be identified, channeled, and ultimately exploited." |
Donna Wentworth on the frisson over Larry Lessig's appearance yesterday in front of the Supremes: "The Berkman Center crew... is excited about all of the blog commentary flowing from the Eldred hearing."
She continues: "Charlie Nesson just walked into my office and we spoke for a bit about blogs and the Eldred case... Charlie suggested that one way of demonstrating to the Justices that the nature of publishing has changed is to engage in a debate of the big questions of this case within the online environment itself... [He] also thinks that blogs are key to keeping the copyfight conversation/debate alive beyond the hearing--beyond this single 'coalescing event.'" |
Glenn Reynolds on an important aspect of blogs: "I get the occasional complaint from old-line journalists about my 'bias' in the way I characterize something I link to." But there's a material difference, he notes: "Unlike old media, I link to it. Readers don't have to take my word. They can make up their own minds." |
Robert Corr analyzes, in a long essay, the issue of bias in the blogosphere, concluding that in spite of its seeming samizdat roots, it still manages to marginalize dissenting voices: "Blogging requires relatively little capital and is therefore not owned by a powerful few. Nonetheless, capital requirements exist and marginalise many groups. Furthermore, because blogging is almost entirely unprofitable, bloggers rely on power from other sources to support their activities. The result is a similar concentration of control."
Later, in concluding that it's no surprise that the general politics of the blogosphere skew to the right: "This new medium is the domain of white, middle-class American men, and severe structural barriers restrict access by other groups. Those that adhere to the dominant ideology of the warbloggers are rewarded with larger audiences and higher rankings in search engines. Those that challenge the mainstream must face substantial flak." |
James Lileks, who works for a newspaper and likens the blogosphere to "a coffeeshop stocked with every periodical in the world," comments on a realization he had recently after access to the Web went down at his office: "I’ve come to depend on the krill-filtering mechanisms of blogs and news sites, because they’re far more interesting than the wire feeds... a wire story consists of one voice pitched low and calm and full of institutional gravitas, blissfully unaware of its own biases or the gaping lacunae in its knowledge."
His conclusion: "I'm serious. I was sitting at a terminal at a major American daily, and I thought: I feel so uninformed!" |
J.D. Lasica on the new technologies and devices that are enabling the proliferation of personal storytelling: "People from all walks of life are now picking up the tools and telling their own stories." The simple premise of the Center for Digital Storytelling he profiles: "We all have a powerful story to tell." |
Bryan Alexander, of the Smart Mobs team, on those blogging Eldred v. Ashcroft: "Although Court tradition prohibits live notetaking, this is as close as we can get to the experience itself." |
Peter Drayton, in commenting on an experiment involving blogs and Groove: "While tools such as weblogs are OK for simple collaborations, they aren't as great for more focused, interactive discussions. In fact their permanence can even be a disadvantage."
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Phil Wolff on the developments in Google's new news service that will likely come: "Google News is crawling only 4000 news sources. No reason not to crawl 4 million. With scale comes the ability to narrowcast." So, he advises, "Stake out your niche now, learn to cover it, and blog on. Google is waiting."
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Matt Cutz, a Google engineer, on its tweaking of its search algorithms: "[We love] the weblogging community, because it creates useful content and helps us categorize the web. Webloggers produce great content." Another comment worth noting: "We're always looking to find a better trust metric." |
Evan Williams on news aggregators: "I'm starting to get interested in this category of software again... we have something in the works that should address that need."
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Phil Wolff in advocating k-logs: "Blogging as you learn reinforces what you know, builds a record for later reference, and shares the wealth."
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Sgt. Stryker in a post about why bloggers are laregely preaching to the choir and unlikely to sway opinion: "Basically, I'm that guy at the end of the bar who keeps going on and on about shit and who you wish would just shut the fuck up, already. Unsurprisingly, that's a true description of most of the blogosphere."
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Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis: "It is too easy for media folk to dismiss something called a 'blog.' Can you blame them? Many of today's discussions around blogging and journalism chase the red herring of the form rather than the function." |
Chuq Von Rospach on the death of the newspaper: "When you combine [the ease of publishing afforded by blogs] with things like RSS aggregators and Google News, what you're really doing is not putting editors out of business, but breaking down the hegemony of the copy desk."
What blogging does, he continues, is "start to break down the barriers that prevent valuable material from being found. It re-enables, in a big way, word of mouth. it democratizes the way quality is discovered, taking it out of the hands of the few in power (the record exec, the acquisition editor, the copy desk editor, the radio station program director) and brings that process back towards the people." |
Richard Poe on why blog-politics may skew to the right: "Talk radio, webzines, list servers, message boards, and now blog sites have one thing in common. They are interactive." Meaning, he continues, "it is physically impossible for new media to do what old media did--that is, to shove unpopular ideas down peoples' throats..." |
Rickard Linde, in an essay on the evolution of "transparent commerce": "A couple of years ago the Cluetrain Manifesto outlined a strategy of openness and a vision for business in the twentyfirst century... The authors got it right but implementation has been slow, so very slow... except for one growing corner of the web, the blogosphere." |
Arnold Kling agrees with Clay Shirky: ""In the world of mass media, Britney Spears or Paul Krugman can achieve market shares and compensation relative to amateurs that far exceed the differences, if any, in talent and ability. As the Internet takes over, the huge concentration of rewards relative to abilities probably will disappear." |
Shelley Powers on her nostalgia for the earlier days of blogging: "Too many weblogs I've visited recently haven't updated in days, weeks, even months. Perhaps we're going through a maturation process -- posting less frequently, but with more care. Or perhaps, we're all burning out."
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Mike Golby on a sentiment others are sharing about their blog-fatigue: "We work [for that is what it is] from within a rigid framework. Blogging is subject to perhaps more devices, conventions, artifices, and rules than I at first imagined. It is an enormously restrictive medium."
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Tom Shugart: "I'm constantly reassessing my relationship with blogging. It's kind of like being a lovesick teenager. One day it's exhilarating. The next I'm nearly bent over with the pain of doubt, insufficiency, and abandonment."
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Jack Shafer in commentary in Slate on the value of journalism schools: "What say the professors to my observation that the very best, most ethical, most philosophically and historically minded journalists I know have no formal training in these subjects?" His answer: "You become a journalist the same way you become a surgeon—you probe, you extemporize, you cut, and you paste."
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Aaron Swartz, who's been invited by Larry Lessig to sit in on his argument of the Eldred case in front of the Supreme Court, on the fact that he's not allowed to take the notes he'd hoped to post to his blog: "I think this is outrageous, but hopefully I will be able to remember enough to provide an interesting account." |
Ken Sands, via Steve Outing, on his avoidance of the term "blog": "I have now begun to talk about 'interactive column writing' as a potentially great journalistic practice. That's not very catchy, but at least it doesn't carry the blog baggage." |
Kirk Job-Sluder on Clay Shirky's essay and amateurism in general: "To be quite honest, the author completely misses historical context... Basically over last century, the print periodical industry was transformed from a market in which most people who wanted to be published, could get published in a neighborhood or community periodical, to a market dominated by a few key players that are considerably less interested in printing amateur work for the sake of building community." |
Arts & Letters Daily, oft-cited as a proto-blog, shuts down: " Arts & Letters Daily has been kept afloat by the goodwill of its editors, Tran Huu Dung and Denis Dutton... it is now time for them to move on."
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Matt Haughey on Google's readjustment of its search algorithms, one that appears to have downgraded the impact bloggers were having on search results: "...weblogs were getting an unfair advantage for a long while. When they readjusted, the unfair advantage was gone, and I'm completely fine with that..."
Oliver Willis' opinion on the matter: "I'm still the #1 Oliver on Google. Bigger than Stone, Sacks, North and Wendell Holmes. That is all that matters. All." |
Nick Denton comments on Clay Shirky's thoughts on blogging: "I disagree, completely." He concludes: "In any environment in which weblog authors are rewarded financially, the stars will take a disproportionate share, just as hot actors do in Hollywood movies. And that is because, even if bandwidth and publishing systems are free, talent and marketing critical mass will always be in short supply." |
Copyright 2002 Corante. All rights reserved. Terms of use
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