Blogs are threatened by big players, too

Wednesday, June 4, 2003

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

We've been reading a lot lately about the fragile environment surrounding American media.

Any day now, big media fish will eat so many small fry that our pool will be devoid of discourse; American democracy is at risk.

But we're not talking about TV and the FCC business. We're talking computers here and the tens of thousands of Web-based journals called blogs. This is a world of ideas far beyond news media profits or government regulation. It's one-on-one journalism.

"Will the big bloggers be snapped up by the mainstream media? Will the big boys start to rival major newspapers? What do you think?" asks host John Hawkins. The question was posed during a recent online discussion.

"I think the really big boys have already started to rival major columnists, and major political magazine editors," answers Eugene Volokh.

The big boys are not Fox, ABC or any newspaper. The big boys are the Web sites that generate tremendous traffic. And the impact of blogging already reaches so-called mainstream media because, as one writer says, blogs are "like a terrier" when the media gets a story wrong or the spin is egregious.

Another early blogger, Rebecca Blood, recently said at a conference in Vienna that the mandate of the online discourse is the personal view. "No one expects (bloggers) to be objective ... and no one expects them to be fair."

Bloggers, unlike mass media, focus on the "I-level." This is how I see the world. And then someone else who has a different take can challenge that world. The danger is that people only read stuff they already agree with -- and that's not enough. We need conversations to go back and forth, discourse, the essence of civility.

On the web:

www.rightwingnews.com (see symposiums)

www.rebeccablood.net

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