Why I Write and Read Blog

Posted on April 30, 2003 in Crosstalk Thinking

Angry Bear pored over a transcript of a PBS report about blogs and blogging which got it right for the most part. He righteously took offense, however, with MSNBC’s Joan Connell who complained “Out there in the blogosphere, often it goes from the mind of the blogger to the mind of the reader, and there’s no backup. And I would submit that that editing function really is the factor that makes it journalism.”

Blogs threaten established media and for this reason, the media elite are now engaged in trying to create a shadow media which purports to be the same thing. The average reader may not know the difference and, alas, these faux blogs often appear on peoples’ reading lists as the “real thing”.

Journalists have been undergoing extensive training to respect authority, which results in the present cheerleading sessions for war and destruction. I must emphasize that blogs are not jounalism, but letters from one person to the rest of the world. I don’t think of Pax Nortona as a news magazine or any kind of topical archive. It’s just my expressions, both good and bad, of places that I have been intellectually. I’m not so self-important as to think that I’ve arrived at any final places in my thinking. I read blogs for the intellectual exchange which is sometimes factual, sometimes artistic in nature.

There’s no right way to blog. Bringing in an editor only brings in soul-stifling judgements on the quality of the material which destroys the ultilitarian purpose of the media: which is to float ideas before the widest possible audience of readers and see them tested in the arena of free exchange and criticism. One editor is not an adequate test of the value of an idea. A trained corps of journalists is still not enough. It needs to be reviewed by the greatest possible number for the greatest insight.