I heard Michael Pollan participating in a panel the other night. This post, however, is not about Michael Pollan and my sometime obsession therewith. So do keep reading.
MP was asked the old standby handwringing question about whether "traditional" media will die. He answered with a cool wave of the hand, saying the old, gray media institutions will remain necessary and adapt to the times, and I'd guess he's right about that.
In such discussions, blogs are the cool new kid in town. Alluring, but scary. Bloggie might let you hang out with him--or he might kick your ass just for fun.
But old media has nothing to fear, said MP. Blogs, he explained, are fundamentally parasitic. They don't report, they merely commentate. Nothing against commentating, that's all well and good. The point is blogs will always need solid media institutions for their raw material. The point is they are not a threat.
I know he's right about this, because it's the prevailing wisdom in media commentary circles and prevailing wisdom is never wrong. I've done my fair share of fact-checking for Columbia Journalism Review and am familiar with the old media panic arc: from freakout (We're all gonna die!) to recovery (No, wait, we are still needed, thankgod.) Recovery generally involves noting the inadequacies of new media outlets and deciding to both beat them and join them online.
It is indeed true that many blogs are the equivalent of the editorial page of a newspaper. (Nothing wrong with that, but they still need the news division, etc.) But I don't think it's giving blogs their due to think of them only as opedoparasites.
The blog is its own written form; it's not a replacement for any existing thing. And many blogs don't leech from news organizations, but create their own raw material.
Tiny Farm Blog is built on original farm photography. Oakland Streets analyzes the byways of Oakland through the lens of urban planning theory. And this long-titled blog, created by a dear old chum of mine, reflects on swimming obscene distances. The raw material is life and the writers' own observations. Which, when you think about it, is pretty nice. And, really, not hurting anyone.
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