Matt Yglesias

13 Responses to “The Decline of Blogging”

1. fostert Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 4:31 pm

   Are we really entering the phase of old guys sitting on the porch talking about how blogging was better in the Good Old Days? Please. As my grandmother always said: the Good Old Days really weren’t so good, progress is better.

2. Al Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 4:33 pm

   I would say that there are compensating benefits to the new, more professionalized, more institutionalized blogosphere.

   Especially to Matthew’s bank account.

3. JH Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm

   Especially to Matthew’s bank account.

   OH SNAP! GOOD ONE AL! LOL!!

4. James Gary Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 4:45 pm

   Gosh, it must really suck to not be on the Cutting Edge of the Next Big Thing anymore and have to deal with the reality of producing content for little or no money and no guarantee that anyone will read it.

   Too bad print media–where it used to be possible to write for money–isn’t exactly booming these days.

5. stick Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm

   She forgot one: Big time bloggers are increasingly turning into the very media pundits that they once criticized. A new Village has emerged onto the landscape. First time tragedy; second time farce.

6. pseudonymous in nc Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 5:05 pm

   From the comments there:

   The A-listers, and the other bloggers (especially the political bloggers) who are now employed by magazines and think-tanks, have fallen prey to one of the things that made most newspaper columnists so deathly stale: the need to present themselves as Experts on Everything.

   There are understandable pressures to have something to say about everything, but there are palliatives in the blog format, not least having commenters who may well be hot shit on topics, but that requires reading and taking note of the comments.

   The really quite pitiful exercise in amateur blogpal lit-crit for Infinite Jest — which I fear will be featured in a WaPo piece soon enough — is a good example of the kind of stuff best left to the American Idol audition reel.

7. Poptarts Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 5:32 pm

   I think in the early days people were more polite, now they are just jaded, especially commenters to blogs who are dicks for the most part these days. They can be anonymously rude and there are no consequences.

8. Skippy Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 5:47 pm

   The thing about the loss of community is very real. Read HuffPost, Talking Points Memo — they never link to other sources unless they think they have to, and even if they’re totally ripping off another blog.

   How often do you see hat-tips anymore? In today’s cut-throat blog world you look like a dandy from the Victorian era if you do something nice like that.

9. Ed Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm

   I’ll be contrary. There is nothing really wrong with bloggers, and the rise of bloggers focused on a few areas of expertise is a good thing .I’d rather read one long insightful post on a blog once per week, with thoughtful commentary, then a dozen throwaway posts on what someone has read in the MSM a day.

   However what has happened is simply diminishing returns. There are lots of bloggers, there are now people paid to generate comment, and there is a limit of what you can intelligently say each day. There is a limit to how many hours a day you can devote to reading this stuff.

   The twitter/ facebook stuff is sort of the equivalent of a whole bunch of bars catering to frat kids and kids from the suburbs in a neighborhood at the other end of town. As long as they don’t come to your neighborhood and your bar, its OK though a little embarrassing, especially if you have out of town friends come in and they want to go there. If they start showing up in your neighborhood or a frat bar opens up right next to your bar there might be a problem. The internet is a big enough place for the crap not to infect the good blog sites unless every blogger decides they need to imitate the crap.

10. dob Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 8:51 pm

    You might have something, Skippy, wrt HuffPo, I dunno as I don’t regularly read it, but don’t tar TPM with that brush. The stories they don’t break, they link to the breakers.

    The bit I find annoying these days are bloggers with comment sections who don’t participate in them.

11. pseudonymous in nc Says:
    July 3rd, 2009 at 2:15 am

    don’t tar TPM with that brush. The stories they don’t break, they link to the breakers.

    Agreed: TPM gets ripped off by the big news orgs often enough to avoid making that mistake with its sources.

12. lost Says:
    July 4th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

    TPM started to suck once JMM went missing

13. Navel Gazing At The Navel Gazing « Around The Sphere Says:
    July 5th, 2009 at 2:34 pm

    [...] Matt Y: [...]