Tuesday, April 02, 2002

Signs of intelligence Speaking of the web and journalism, the tendentious pundits should have a look at this fine piece of reporting by the hitherto unheralded Sacramento investigative reporter, Rob Cockerham. It is rich, human, entertaining, intelligent, and a host of other things professional journalism rarely attempts to be. Thanks to Tom Shugart for the link. 7:17:17 PM     coupla revs David Weinberger puts a world of sense into an itty-bitty space in this interview at frontwheeldrive: There are a couple of revolutions happening right now in the weblogging world. Social writing and idea development - true joint authorship in a truly distributed way. The development of highly voiced centers of knowledge that will twist the org chart around new axes. Grassroots person-to-person journalism that substitutes multiple viewpoints for the pretense of objectivity. Which provokes a few thoughts: Camping recently, we experienced something in the way of a truth about Americans: They have become so accustomed to the broadcast mode that they live it. Nearby campers shared their taste in lame xenophobic humor and ragemuzak with all ears within 40 miles. Either they innocently assumed the entire world shared their execrable taste, or they did not give a damn, and confused this strenuous not-giving-of-a-damn with Democracy, Freedom, and the American Way. Broadcast is fundamentally hysteria - a fascist mode - which is why many Americans feel violently uncomfortable with a host of media and marketing tools. It is also why, confronted with chronic media misapprehensions of blogging, the best one can hope is that signal insights like Weinberger's don't get lost in the noise. The blog is the Net's current manifestation of free-standing articulation, which is one of the deeper values of civilized communities. Unlike broadcast, blogs do not push. They come in many guises. Some are virtually indistinguishable from broadcast media. The agility of blogging lies not in the external form, but in the underlying approach. Messers Sullivan, Layne, et al are merely newspaper writers in drag. (The Boston Globe article considers blogging entirely through the filter of newspaper columnists who blog.) Anything becomes a circle jerk if one chooses to circle the academy's wagons and freeze-dry the form. The more difficult path is to see what's new. What is intolerable to those who manufacture broadcast speech is that bloggers, happy campers that we are, foreground the power to take in rather than to blare out. To choose one's dish rather than be dished to. Emanations from the likes of Sullivan are far less interesting than disseminations glancing from a hundred, or a million, loosely joined "axes." 12:25:01 PM

© Copyright 2002 Tom Matrullo. Last update: 4/2/2002; 1:25:02 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.