What is the threat to political blogging? Some worry that irresponsible bloggers pose a threat. I don’t really think so. If we have to worry about anything, I think we should worry about the nature of our government. Government, after all, is where the busybodies go who insist upon running everyone else’s business.
That is why several days ago in response this post at Shaun Kenny I wrote this comment.
How long have people been blogging on the Internet? Ten years, maybe? How will people regard the Internet and blogging ten years from now? Do any of us know? Based on these past ten years, do we have enough data to extrapolate what the future holds?
What can history teach us about blogging and its future? What past technologies have allowed individuals to cheaply publish news and opinions for the benefit of a reading audience? I chose the pseudonym of Thomas Paine (i.e., Citizen Tom) for a reason. When I consider blogging from the perspective of the past, I think of the pamphleteers of Paine’s era. And I would not be surprised if our fates will be similar to those that befell the pamphleteers of the past.
Based upon what we know of those pamphleteers, I think our fates will depend upon largely upon chance, the content of our blogs, and salesmanship. What successful pamphleteers did is they evolved into corporately held newspapers and magazines.
Yes, the overall quality of blogging does affect readership, but as a practical matter, blogging is just another way for people to communicate. Thus, the real problem we each face from other bloggers is the sheer number of them. How do we rise above the din? How do our readers find us? With that in mind, we each instinctively practice a concept called market segmentation.
Market segmentation, however, provides only an immediate business solution; it does not solve a glaring technical problem. The technical key to our fate lies in solving the problem our readers have in finding us. Thus there are others, not newspapers such as the Washington Post or the Washington Times, who may hold the key to the fates of our blogs.
Google, Yahoo, and other search engines function as gatekeepers. Aggregators such as Blognetnews.com and Waldo’s Virginia Political Blogroll only provide welcome alternatives.
Technology development tends to be unpredictable. The efforts of government to control communications are predictably never ending. Consider what services certain large Internet companies have provided the Red Chinese. Then consider what some who run our government are itching to do.
Well, the threat from government to Internet freedom is coming. However, the government’s choice of controls may take a little different form than I thought. See this post at Below the Beltway.
Remember our Constitution. If you do not remember, our leaders will certainly not bother themselves to remember.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (from here)
Yeah, it’s all “citizen journalism”, freed of the return-on-capital constraints faced by larger media outlets and the natural self-interestedness of big business employees. ‘Cept, of course, there’s more citizen opinion-mongering, than relation of fact in the blogs. And because the ordinary blog reader prefers it spiced up, citizen opinion runs towards citizen defamation.
Let’s consider Paine’s Common Sense.
Chapter I: An abstract consideration of the English Constitution, in particular, the Monarchy
Chapter II: More about the Monarchy, with a lengthy discussion of Biblical kingship, William the Conqueror, the War of the Roses, Henry VI and Henry VII (1st monarch after the War of the Roses). Some mention of a guy named Sir William Meredith who claimed that the English monarchy was in truth a republic. Nothing said about Meredith’s person.
IV How America is different from England. No mention of persons except the English Secretary of the Navy, upon whose calculation Paine relies for the cost of building a warship, a pirate named Captain Death, and an English Lord of the Treasury (member of Parliament who sits in the Cabinet, but not nearly as important as the Chancellor of the Exchequer).
The point being that it’s an insult to Paine’s memory to compare his work with the blogs. Blogs rely on ad hominem argument and defamation; Paine’s work is high political philosophy by contrast. Paine was not the equivalent of a blogger.
scandal17 – Thank you for your comment.
I understand your concern, but I disagree. I doubt Paine would feel insulted. Consider that we are still discussing his work centuries latter on a blog.
Just as there are some exceptionally good bloggers, Paine was an exceptionally good pamphleteer. That is why Paine is remembered, and most of the other pamphleteers of his time have been forgotten.
Dude, there are no exceptionally good bloggers. There are no good bloggers. It’s all crap.
Paine is remembered because he was good and a Gulliver to the Lilliputians who now deposit their ill-conceived thinking like rabbit turds in cyberspace.
Read his Common Sense. I doubt most bloggers are literate enough to comprehend the bare meaning.
Blogging is the putting illiteracy, or short-attention-span syndrome, on a pedestal. Our culture is nothing but shame.
Blog Justice – Thank you for your comment.
Too often our actions do not seem to be in accord with our words. I expect there is no one reason for that, but I would guess that many are uncertain of their beliefs, that others simply do not express themselves well, and that some just say things for effect. So it is that when people come to a blog to say that they do not like blogs, all I can do is point out that their words are inconsistent with their behavior.
Manner and message may seem inconsistent, but blogs are the nuclear option in the present environment, and the 1st strike was launched long ago by those whom you flatter by considering them Paine’s successors. I have no choice but to blog my protest against abuse of the 1st Amendment by the blogs.