Beyond “Bloggers”
Tina Dupuy conveys an interesting point from Jay Rosen:
We asked Rosen what he thought of the term “blogger” and how there is not a word to distinguish a journalist who blogs and a numbnut who blogs.
“Blogger will become such a broad term it will lose all meaning,” he told FBLA.
So in five years will “blogger” be synonymous with “writer?” Will telling someone you’re a blogger need the same follow up question as there is for when you tell someone you’re a writer?
That seems about right. One thing you see even within the smaller universe of the “netroots” is that at each annual Yearly Kos / Netroots Nation convention there’s larger and larger amounts of divergence between what people are doing. Some of the folks who are newer to the game don’t totally appreciate this dynamic, but I recall how back in 2002-2003 there was a pretty undifferentiated mush of “liberal bloggers” that’s become a much more elaborated ecology of people and institutions doing pretty different things.
11 Responses to “Beyond “Bloggers””
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August 18th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Re “but I recall how back in 2002-2003 there was a pretty undifferentiated mush of “liberal bloggers” that’s become a much more elaborated ecology of people and institutions doing pretty different things.”
———-
The same observation, of course, applies to the various services provided by those hookers on 14th Street. Everybody’s a specialist these days.
And , for some reason, everybody criticizes those jolly sluts who give it away for free.
August 18th, 2009 at 11:53 am
The nutsroots is still nuts. I’m reading Wall St. Journal economics editor David Wessell’s new book The Great Panic and on page 4 he quotes “prolific blogger Brad DeLong” to the effect that we live in the republic of the Central Bank or something like that. I think blahggers are becoming more accepted and mainstream which is a good thing. Bloggers give good quote.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
“ecology”? Seriously?
August 18th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
well, “journalist” gets applied without distinction to those who report news and newsworthy evens and mere stenographers.
August 18th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Bloggers will be more like the twitterers of the Iranian uprising, witnesses to the event and “reporting” what they have seen. The challenge will be to distinguish the credible from the uncredible. Which is not so much different from today, as we attempt to distinguish credible “reporting”. Not many years ago, most well-known newspapers and other news media were assumed to be credible. But not today. How credible is the Washington Post. Or the Washington Times. Or even the New York Times. In the future “news” will be reported by eyewitnesses, making potential “reporters” out of everybody with a computer.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Poptarts, that’s kind of an interesting quote. I don’t know the full context, of course, but it sounds to me like it was meant to be dismissive of Delong, which might be a little tougher if you mentioned his day job.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I always find it interesting that journalists have not only decided that they are the gatekeepers to who has a voice, but then have also decided that there are journalists and there are the undifferentiated masses (or “nutjobs”). On a lot of issues, who gives a damn what a “journalist” has to say? Lots of professors — who actually have mastered a subject matter and not just a technique — have blogs that are very much worth reading as do people in other professions. Journalists both want to be able to bitch that there is a new medium out there that does not always take into account their exalted stances but then they also want to believe that when they enter that benighted field they should still be the final word on what constitutes quality.
dcat
August 18th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Poptarts, that’s kind of an interesting quote. I don’t know the full context, of course, but it sounds to me like it was meant to be dismissive of Delong, which might be a little tougher if you mentioned his day job.
I don’t know were you’re coming from, i.e your preconceptions, so I don’t know how best to respond to your knee-jerk reaction.
The book is actually In Fed We Trust.
Wessel and Wall Street Journal business pages are relatively sane, unlike the lunatic asylum that populates the editorial pages.
Wessel probably got it off Brad’s blog which is why he called him a blogger and he used the quote to make a central theme of his book about the Fed. I doubt it was meant as dismissive. Also, in the first ten pages he says something else about blogs like hes trying to appeal to bloggers and be “hip.” I remember it b/c it struck me at the time that here’s a mainstream village author treating bloggers with respect (maybe he’s trying to sell books) which is why I commented on it at Matt’s blog post about bloggers..
August 18th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Oky doky.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
2002?
God, you’re old!
August 21st, 2009 at 9:18 pm
@Paul Camp:
God, you’re purile!