I can’t reconstruct the entire link-chain that got me to this discussion by Anil Dash on the direction of blogging in light of recent events with respect to both the Jordan and Gannon imbroglios, but regardless of how I got there, it is well worth reading. A brief excerpt to tempt you to go there and read:
And about Eason Jordan: More myopic blogger triumphalism. Dear political bloggers, most people, even in the blogosphere, have never heard of the whole kerfuffle, let alone the one surrounding Jeff Gannon. This is inside-baseball cliquishness at its worst. I’m not saying these guys didn’t screw up, I’m saying that you didn’t win. It won’t temper we liberals who control the media to be more moderate, and it won’t keep the White House from trying to spin the media. Net effect? Lots of negatives, few positives.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re hurting us. You’re hurting all weblogs.
We’re just barely into the phase where normal people have heard the word “blog”, and the zealous political bloggers who form a loud, obnoxious minority of bloggers have decided they want their grandmothers to think of blogging as “that thing that gets journalists fired”. That sucks, and it’s going to limit the number of people who join into our medium. And the zealous tech bloggers who form a loud, obnoxious minority of bloggers have decided they want their grandmothers to think that blogging is “that thing that gets regular people fired”. That’s not better.
You can’t make a medium where there’s absolutely zero tolerance for being human and making mistakes. Every political blogger crowing about Eason and Gannon is just sealing the fate of us all when large journalistic organizations start to reciprocate. I know I couldn’t stand up to the scrutiny of even the smallest news network or newspaper focusing all its resources on finding my weaknesses, flaws, inconsistencies, or misstatements. Hell, I’d have to eliminate about 90% of the jokes I make from my daily conversations.
Indeed, whither blogging?
Whither us all?