On Blogging

I have finally decided to abandon Xanga and switch my allegiance to Blogger (yet another Google service). Which leads me to start thinking about the whole idea of blogging.

There was this interesting article in the papers the other day, about the predicted demise of newspapers by 2040. How many people, especially the younger generation, are turning to blogs for their daily dose of news. They do not want their news delivered like 'gospel' from the approved media sources. Instead, what we have are countless blogs that exemplify our postmodern society, where there are no right or wrong posts/comments/opinions, just individual, 'IMHO'-type of opinions and everyone has a voice that should be 'respected'. It may seem utopian to some, this democratization of the media, giving every netizen an outlet to express their opinions, even those averse to HTML. And more importantly, as a budding tech 'journalist' does it spell the end of the traditional media as we know it?

Yay, everyone can read about anyone else's opinions. We are entering a new era where people from diverse backgrounds and cultures can interact and discuss anything under the sun. It's like the forums of Ancient Greece, just many times more egalitarian and inclusive.

Sadly, like most of the 'ideals' associated with the Internet, the reality is far from that. As the SF writer Theodore Sturgeon puts it succinctly, "99% of everything is crud." I don't mean to sound elitist but that's the truth. I'm sure there are very useful and thought provoking stuff on blogs out there but many are shallow and mundane, including yours truly. I shall not even comment on those which think it is 133t to use abbreviations and slang that make them incomprehensible to all but a select audience. That is why we have search engines.

Maybe that's why Google bought Blogger.com in the first place. What they get is self sustaining, free content creation by millions of people and of course, to sift the chaff from the wheat, you will need a search engine like Google. I'm not going to talk about the ever increasing reach of Google and its services. There have been enough talk about whether it will or has already betrayed its 'Do no evil" motto. The end result is that we are now even more dependent on search engines to collate the useful information for us. Google News is only the beginning.

What we may see is traditional media becoming decentralized in terms of its format and style as the media move towards shorter, more blog-like reports and opinion pieces. They will become more personal but there will always be a demand for good reporters and writers. How many blogs are non-partisan, factual and neutral in tone? How many flame wars occur in a typical forum? Yes, personal opinions are important and an intimate style of writing can be more engrossing. After all, the mainstream media has not been exactly free of biased reporting and lack of integrity. Yet, I think there is still a need for objectivity (if such a thing is possible) in reporting and the most obvious of all, good communication skills.

The reporter of the future may be your Everyman but he or she will still need to learn proper punctuation.