Why blogging is getting bigger
Not very long ago, I was suspicious of blogs. Maybe it was because I know what unedited text looks like; maybe it was from working in the so-called "establishment medium" of print. Either way, I figured most blogs are junk.
And they are. Most blogs are self-indulgent, masturbatory junk, emanations from people who couldn't get published anywhere else. However, I think they'll put a huge dent in traditional journalism, and here's why:
Clue #1. Months ago, I was watching the "Tonight Show" for whatever reason (I don't watch much television and I'm not usually up that late). They have a recurring "man on the street" segment where they ask people about current events and what have you. The answers that people give, and the opinions they espouse, are very amusing.
I don't remember what the questions they were asking that night, but one girl was a real standout. She had brown hair, wore strange glasses, was a little overweight, and wore a frumpy red dress -- not the kind of person who usually appears on TV. Yet instead of letting her talk for 15 seconds like the other people, they stayed with her for two or three minutes, almost the entire segment. They asked her if she attracted really masculine men, and she said, "No, I usually attract English-major types who look like they're dying of consumption." The mini-interview went on in that vein. She was sardonic, witty, and riveting to watch, though completely unrehearsed and natural.
Next on the show was Gwyneth Paltrow, who began by saying how funny the girl in the red dress was. And do you know that Paltrow wasn't half as engaging or witty as the girl from off the street? Here was a professional actress, who gets paid millions for a dozen weeks' work, and she couldn't be as entertaining as a rank amateur.
Clue #2. I write play occasional reviews for the newspaper at which I work. I've seen the "big name" local actors, in many cases several times, in various roles. There are a few who are as good or better than any celebrity actor you can name. So why were they making chump change in a prominent but second-tier theatre city?
The answer is that most famous actors are famous not because they are talented, but because of brutally hard work and rapacious ambition. There is no other explanation: normal people can't compete because they prioritize their lives differently: they might consider their work to be important, but as one important thing among several. Read about the malformed souls in People magazine and you'll quickly see that most celebrities order their lives around fame, money, and influence; if everything else didn't take a back seat, they wouldn't be as successful as they are. How else to explain the rise of marginally talented pinheads in Hollywood?
"You started off talking about journalists, Eric," you're thinking. Quite right, and here's the tie-in. Having worked with journalistic larvae in college, and around professional journalists for years, I am convinced that reporters and editors are generally no smarter than average. That goes double for television news people, who are mainly selected for being cute and charming but not smart (there are the odd ones who are cute and smart, but they are in the minority.) They are paid to attend events, talk to people, research facts, then write articles about what they've read and observed.
Journalists will never describe their work that simply. They act as if journalism is some kind of mystery religion, only accessible to the initiated, when the reality is that any decent writer can learn to write a basic news story. That tactic used to work, back in the days when it took a lot of effort and cash to turn out a publication. Now, the veil has been lifted. The revolution that began with cheap, affordable desktop publishing -- which let anyone with a computer and printer become a publisher -- only accelerated with the ascent of the Internet. The bottleneck with desktop publishing came after the publication left the printer: printing and distribution costs a lot of money. To host your own Web site costs practically nothing.
While I don't think blogs will replace traditional journalism, they will satisfy a good portion of the public appetite for news -- not the actual reporting of the events, but the interpretation of those events. The public will increasingly realize that attending a news conference at the White House does not make a person wise. Don't get me wrong -- there is no substitute for a professional journalist when it comes to investigating and writing in-depth stories. However, their opinions will be less important in a world where anyone can throw out their opinion, for better or for worse. This will depress journalists' salaries even further, too.
A related change will come when broadband connections are bigger and more prevalent. Then we'll start to see the rise of small-scale TV shows and movies, too. After all, there are plenty of theatre companies with unexploited talent, kept away from the public by entertainment-industry executives.
