What the Media Don't Understand About Blogging

David Weinberger, blogging at Boston.com, the blog covering the Democratic National Convention, in Boston's Fleet Center, searches for a good short answer to the question "What don't the media understand about blogging?".

To him it is their tendency to focus on the A-listers to understand the blogging phenomenon, because that is what resembles themselves closest. To David, as to me, the important part of blogging is the social dimension, and that is mostly found outside of the A-list.

At BlogTalk there was some discussion about the power-law and the A-listers. I never have thought this a very useful discussion, as in my eyes the power-law becomes irrelevant the moment you stop looking at your weblog as broadcasting. Then exactly where you are in the A-Z-list spectrum doesn't matter, as starting dialogues, building networks and creating communities isn't influenced by power-law factors like the first one in wins. It's authenticity and consistency that determine that, and other factors influencing group-size are then much more important.

Once you see the power-law is of no particular relevance to your blog, then the whole discussion whether blogging is journalism becomes obsolete in the same way. That again seems to be a hot topic mainly because the media project themselves on blogging. At BlogTalk Horst Prillinger put that discussion to rest with a resounding NO to the question whether blogging is journalism. Jane Perrone of the Guardian did as well.

So, blogging is not broadcasting, it's not journalism, it's merely that some blogs are. But those are not the blogs that show the most interesting aspects of blogging, those are the visible ones because they resemble existing media the most.

(btw, as I found this in Weinbergers blog about the DNC, here's an aggregation of bloggers at the DNC.)