A mainstream media love note to the blogosphere: Blog off!!!
By Tom Foremski - February 26, 2006
Trevor Butterworth writing in the FT Mag recently wrote a very long 4600 word piece about blogging. Same cast of characters and the same mainstream media misconception that blogging is bringing down their empire, it's not. (See answer at end of this post.)
The best part of the article was the the last part (I think that's where I skipped down to...) It discusses whether Karl Marx would have made a good blogger and mentions my former university classmate Francis Wheen...and then leaves us with a wonderful image of the billions of posts in a "virtual tomb."
...journalism was an act of economic necessity that, initially, necessitated Engels doing all the writing. But Marx was a quick learner with a deft wit, and in his brisk biography, Francis Wheen posits that "had he but world enough and time Marx could have. made his name as the sharpest polemical journalist of the 19th century. But at his back he could always hear the nagging voice of conscience whispering, 'c'est magnifique, mais c'est ne pas la guerre." For Marx and Engels, journalism was trivial - an impediment to serious, memorable and above all influential work. "Mere potboiling," wrote Engels of the more than 500 articles he and Marx wrote for The New York Daily Tribune, "It doesn't matter if they are never read again."And that, in the end, is the dismal fate of blogging: it renders the word even more evanescent than journalism; yoked, as bloggers are, to the unending cycle of news and the need to post four or five times a day, five days a week, 50 weeks of the year, blogging is the closest literary culture has come to instant obsolescence. No Modern Library edition of the great polemicists of the blogosphere to yellow on the shelf; nothing but a virtual tomb for a billion posts - a choric song of the word-weary bloggers, forlorn mariners forever posting on the slumberless seas of news.
It seems as if Mr Butterworth has not worked as a newspaper man because four or five news stories a day, five days a week and 46 weeks out of the year is about typical from my experience as an FT newspaper reporter (we got 6 weeks vacation.)
And the same obsolescence governs the world of newsprint; by tomorrow, it has become fish-wrap.
By the way, the FT set up a blog on Blogger (free account of course...) to discuss the story then closed it down a few days later saying "Blog off, we've had enough" (!!!) Date lined February 14th.
So much animosity directed at the the blogosphere! I guess the mainstream media still doesn't get what's happening so let me spell it out a little more clearly:
It's not blogging that is disrupting the legacy media establishment--it is online advertising that is causing all the damage.
Blogging is going to disrupt the public relations industry.
By Tom Foremski - February 26, 2006 | Permalink | Category: Media Watch
| SVW Newsfeed | SVW Toolbar | SVW Newsletter | SVW Mobile
- NEW STORIES:
- Saturday Post 2: Since There Is No Objective Way To Gauge Search . . . Brand Will Win
- Saturday Post: Is Apple About To Launch Apple Search?
- Newswatch 4.4.08: iTunes is No. 1
- Upcoming Speaking Events... And Lunch At Your Place
- Out & About: Entrepreneurs Talking About Recession- Are Angel Investors In Trouble?
- Newswatch 4.3.08: MySpace Music: DRM-free with streaming
- Four More Silicon Valley Minutes...
- ThoughtLeader Interview with Jon Flaxman: Driving Change Across HP's Global Business Groups
- PR Pitch Facebook Experiment Ends . . . A New One Begins - Are We Connected?
- Newswatch 4.2.08: CTIA attendees fall for Mars hoax
Comments (4)
Tom,
Did you actually read the piece? I find your dismissive response truly odd. I found the piece one of the more illuminating pieces I've read in main stream media. I mean really, you have to at least respond to some of the issue raised by A-list bloggers in the pieces.
For example, One of the most immediate problems blogging has is that it is simply not a viable standalone business. Period. This makes the fabric of the blogosphere extremely fragile and transient. This goes directly to the trust we are willing to place in a given blog.
Regards,
Doug
Posted: February 27, 2006 3:48 AM
Douglas, I've been writing exactly the same thing for months: the mighty blogosphere is not so mighty because there is no viable business model to support quality media. It can bareley support the cheapestform of media--gossip!
Mainstream media is in trouble because of online advertising around search--not because of blogging. It would be in trouble even if there was no blogging.
Posted: February 27, 2006 12:49 PM
Ok, now I'm confused.
Aren't you in fact trying to make a go at doing a standalone PR weblog? Isn't your go-to-market strategy blog-based? Is this a hobby or what?
-Doug
Posted: February 27, 2006 1:43 PM
No, I'm not doing a PR blog--I just happen to be picking on the PR sector this month...the analyst industry is next :-)
Good question on the business model, I keep getting distracted by producing this thing and forget about monetising it. As John Marcom, head of Yahoo International and former FT US head said to me, when I answered a similar question in a similar fashion, "so, this is your gift to the world." And I guess it is, at least for now, so I hope that you enjoy it and find it useful.
The sponsorship money is long gone and alas, so is much of my team. I'm becoming very standalone indeed. But hopefully not for long because I do believe that Steve Gillmor is right...(!) All will be explained.
Posted: February 27, 2006 10:44 PM