Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Early Addition
In the spirit of those movie reviewers from obscure media outlets who tell us that some crappy movie released in January is the movie of the year, Gothamist would like to nominate the NY Times' John Schwartz for this gem, in his story about blogs reacting to tsunami news:
But the blogosphere's tendency toward crackpot theorizing and political smack down could not be suppressed for long.Rad - with the NY Times laying this smackdown, it looks like 2005 will be the Year of Blog Backlash. And as far as we can tell, from what we know about getting served mostly from the "You Got F*cked in the Ass" episode of South Park, it could be on.
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
An interesting piece, that will hopefully bring peoples expectation of Blogs down to reality. "Democratic Underground" is a Political based Blog, Expecting reasonable and informed discussion of the why and where-for of a Tsumami or other natural disaster is, IMO, a mistake.
It seems that people expect Blogs to be accurate sources of information and expect Blogs to have the same standards as Journalism. They aren't and have no obligation to do so. What's interesting to me is that many people seem to fly to Blogs for information before any other source. This past year saw a 58% increase in readership (I bet Gothamist saw more than 58%!) and with the popularity of Broadband, 2005 will likly get a sharp increase due to all the Press...
I sort of agree on the "crackpot theorizing" point. There's a pretty self-indulgent element to a lot of people writing weblogs... self-appointed experts and such (I know, newsflash!). Gothamist is a bit more light-hearted and so it's not an issue so much. But I don't think this is a backlash so much as a pendulum swinging back into balance. Enough medium for medium's sake already.
wait, you mean there wasn't a second gunman on the grassy knoll?
And here I thought I was the only person who watched the NYE Southpark Marathon on Friday. Good taste, Gothamist.
'Scuse me, have to get back to my crackpot. And yes, it's most certainly on.
That's funny, I got the opposite impression from the article. Whereas outlets like the Times have previously been somewhat dismissive of blogs as self-reinforcing echo chambers, it seems like this article's theme was the blogosphere as a forum for bullsh*it winnowing through a steady stream of feedback. Sure, some of those comments from DU were held up as being exemples of online crackpottery, but the point of the article was to show how other blogs quickly moved to rebut conpiracy and outlandish theories with a more sober account of reality. I think it's the reactive nature of most blogs to developing news stories that is their strength, rather than as a source of primary information.
wait, wait... i heard there's no escaping the blog and that blogs had become a force that business can't afford to ignore. when there's backlash and grounding somewhere, there's always PR and hype somewhere else. que sera sera! ;)
Ha ha. :)
Oh, it's definitely on.
I agree with Dave H. here. You can correct a blog and quickly repost with updated/corrected info. Let's wait and see how long it takes the Times to print a correction for those incorrect dates that slipped by their editors in Saturday's biz section. See the chart accompanying this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/business/01stox.html?oref=login
The blog backlash must have started at least six months ago, if the timeliness of the NYT's tech coverage in Circuits is any indication.
DU is not a blog.
The Times becomes what it loathes. Wrong.