Wednesday, January 26, 2005

40 Days and 40 Nights

Hugh Hewitt has a fairly persuasive piece which argues that the blogosphere is to news today what television was in 1950--a force which is going to completely remake all of our information institutions.

I still disagree with the blog evangelists in many of the particulars: For instance, Hugh argues against the importance of traditional Big Media saying, "Sure, the Washington Post can 'break' the news that the Pentagon is revamping its intelligence operations, but the moment it is in print it has traveled the globe and a thousand or ten thousand commentaries are registering. The Post no more gets to define the significance of that reorganization than I do."

As I've said before, this is a pretty important difference, no? Without the news that the Post breaks, the blogosphere would have nothing to talk about except for its sleep apnea disorder.

But Hugh is undoubtedly right about the market for news analysis--which the blogosphere may stand to completely obliterate. It's not crazy to think that 20 years from now op-ed pages and opinion magazine might be a thing of the past, leaving Big Media to do only news gathering. Does that sound like a bad thing?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"leaving Big Media to do only news gathering"

They even fail miserable at this because they can, and will, selectively gather the news. A sneaky underhanded way of slanting the news coverage. [i.e.] The coverage of news in Iraq ...if it bleeds it leads, or more to the point, if Americans bleed it leads. Their (MSM's) coverage to date borders on treason. They're responsible for the deaths of many of our brave men in combat because this kind of reporting aids and abets the enemy!