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:: MAX BLACK ::

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --C.S. Lewis

"The Swiss pocket knife of conservative thought on the web..." - Eli Kardrakian

"Bookmark Max and dump your subscription to the newspaper; if you don't have a birdcage you really don't need it anyway..." - Shirley St. James

:: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 ::

Time Trains Big-Media Spotlight on Bloggers

Time Magazine focuses high-wattage limelight on blogs posting an interesting online essay on the impact blogs are having on news consumption. Although the article is predictably off-kilter, it does serve to amplify the state of micropubishing on the web pointing to interesting statistics such as:

"a philosophy professor in New Zealand named Denis Dutton started the blog Arts & Letters Daily artsandlettersdaily.com) to create a website "where people could go daily for a dose of intellectual stimulation." Now the site draws more than 100,000 readers a month. Compare that with, say, the New York Review of Books, which has a circulation of 115,000. The tail is beginning to wag the blog."

Time concedes "elite"(read: 'your father's') media is just now catching on.

The article, however, is typically condescending and arrogant, stacked with phrases that, were the roles reversed, would seem entirely appropriate criticisms of MSM: "Unfortunately, there's a downside to this...sentiment--that is, innocent casualties bloodied by a medium that trades in rumor, gossip and speculation without accountability".

Right..."speculation without accountability." Who'd ever accuse big-media sources such as Time Magazine to be guilty of "speculation without accountability?" I've seen this exact sentence before...but it's more often directed at the likes of Time or the Gray Lady penned by some obscure blogger hacking it out in his basement. The difference, of course, is that almost all blogs now have a 'comments' feature that allow readers to respond quickly and vociferously to a questionable post forcing immediate retraction or correction. The elite media has no such tool (God forbid) to allow dissenting voices to countermand their random 'speculation' wisdom. I suspect it will be too late for the 800 lb. media Gorrilla's to grasp that new media is very much a 'push-pull' phenomenon so they'll continue to operate as they always have; push it down our throats--dissenting voices be damned.

If Time's on it, you can be assured MSM is very concerned and they should be. By the looks of some of the blogs I read, advertising dollars have discovered a highly targeted market where ad dollars are far more cost effective than traditional media buys. The old shotgun approach appears to be giving away to a highly clinical focus of ad revenues and bloggers appear to be proffiting from the evolution.

And here is a humorous sidebar; "according to some" many reporters are spending an inordinate amount of "time" in their cubicles not writing for their employer but surfing the blogosphere and creating their own blogs--a fact that must send shockwaves though the boardrooms of 'elite' media everywhere; if this is the case, "the jigs up".

:: Max 7:23 PM [+] ::
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