Are Bloggers Parasites?
Mar 17th, 2007 | 7 responses
That’s the question of the day in the navel-gazing world of the blogosphere. But let me assure you that this question/allegation does not come from the White House/politicians/establishment!!! This question is posed by a fellow blogger, and he answers it himself.
Nicholas Carr, who says he ‘scavenges’ at his blog named roughtype, writes: “It is worth remembering that, in a literary context, another word for ‘parasitic’ is ‘critical.’ Blogging is, at its essence, a critical form, a means of recycling other writings to ensure that every molecule of sense, whether real or imagined, is distilled and consumed.
“So if someone wants to call my blog parasitic, or even bacterial, that’s fine with me. I’ll consider it not an insult, but a compliment.
“Robert Niles, the editor of the Online Journalism Review, recently decried what he sees as a tendency by journalists to characterise blogs as ‘a parasitic medium’ that feeds off the work of traditional newspapers and magazines (tinyurl.com/yv67v). He calls the charge ‘a poorly informed insult of many hard-working Web publishers who are doing fresh, informative and original work.’
“Maybe so, but Mr. Niles’ protestations notwithstanding, blogs are largely parasitic. Yes, a handful of bloggers do original reporting, usually on highly specialised topics, but most simply react to the news of the day. The blogosphere, as others have pointed out, acts as a kind of global echo chamber. An idea gets swatted around like a ping-pong ball for a few hours until a fresh one takes its place.
“But is that really so bad? I used to think of blogging’s reactive nature as a flaw in the medium. I’ve changed my mind, though. I’ve come to believe that being a literary parasite is no bad thing. I’d argue, in fact, that parasitism is blogging’s most distinctive and probably its most valuable feature…”
Please click here to read the full article…
Online Journalism Review is organising on March 30 a Conference on Entrepreneurial Journalism at Los Angeles to discuss “Can independent online news sites make money… and a difference?”
OJR conferences, the website says, bring together writers and editors to share their passion for online media in group discussion sessions and to learn from colleagues how to improve the quality, visibility and profitability of their work.
Interesting…How I wish I could take a flight from India and attend the conference as interesting and diverse people are participating. Check here for details… But the travel and stay expenses are far beyond my budget!!!
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7 Responses to “Are Bloggers Parasites?”
Yes, bloggers are parasites, and I’m glad.
I use blogs like an index.
I get a notion of what’s out there without having to buy and read every single newspaper and magazine published.
The staff cuts in newspaper offices are a worry, though. Without good investigative reporting by print media, what will you blog about?
Bloggers are not the parasites but rather the parasite slayers, analogous to sex itself, as Glenn Reynolds has written in his scholarly legal essay “Is democracy like sex?”:
“I have chosen as an analogy or metaphor another widely criticized and misunderstood institution — sex. In short, some discoveries resulting from the application of complexity theory to the question of evolutionary fitness among biological systems have important implications for our discussion of the fitness of the body politic. Both kinds of systems face a similar problem — maintaining a balance between adaptability and stability on the one hand, while resisting parasitism on the other. In essence, democracy can be viewed as serving the same function in political systems that sex serves for biological systems — enhancing resistance to parasites.”
http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2005/10/i_believe_that_.html
Most bloggers are not parasites, instead they are productive individuals who create valuable posts. Of course the mainstream media is often a good starting point and source for a blog post. Here are two of my posts that could be of interest:
Why do I blog?
http://egoist.blogspot.com/2005/08/open-thread-post-instalanche-trip.html
Interview with Allen Forkum of Cox & Forkum. (See above cartoon.)
http://egoist.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-allen-forkum.html
All the Best,
Martin Lindeskog – American in spirit.
Gothenburg, Sweden.
Nicholas Carr’s got the right argument re how bloggers ingest and recycle MSM droppings, but the wrong word.
A person who lives by amusing the rich
Bloggers are parasites in the same way that MSM editorials are parasitic. The editors react to whatever is in the news (in many cases, whatever they *permit* to be in the news) by writing commentary…or, as some would say (not I, of course), by spewing forth from Mount Journalism their ill-informed and narrow opinions…
News Flash: we’re all parasites. That’s called interdependency. Welcomoe to the food chain, everyone.
No, they are not. Many of them are childish and self-absorbed, but they are not parasites.
The most interesting side note I’ve seen on this thread is the following:
> Bloggers are parasites in the same way
> that MSM editorials are parasitic.
Blogs are not about news, despite what anyone claims. They are about opinion.
[...] To read my earlier post on bloggers please click here… [...]