Blog Hype
A Blog Revolution? Get a Grip - New York Times
So Nick Denton, the blogging entrepreneur who founded Gawker Media, shares his contempt for blogs with the New York Times.
“The hype comes from unemployed or partially employed marketing professionals and people who never made it as journalists wanting to believe,” he said. “They want to believe there’s going to be this new revolution and their lives are going to be changed.”
Denton makes some good points but he misses the reality of what is fueling the “Blog Revolution.” If one can look past the wannabes blogging because they can’t hack it in a newsroom one will see thousands of people empowered by a publishing tool that gives them opportunities previously available only to the rich and powerful. Blogs have destroyed the Gatekeepers.
I concede that there is a lot of hype surrounding blogs, similar to the podcasting hype, but much of that hype stems from misunderstanding. Blogs aren’t the second coming of the Dot Com boom. If anything, blogs are Ham Radio for the masses. Nobody doing Ham Radio is looking for a business model or a way to get rich. Ham Radio operators just have fun, enjoy connecting without barriers. Bloggers do the same on a grander scale.
Denton, like so many others, is wrong about blogs. If I learned anything at BlogNashville it’s that Blogging is simply a new and powerful way for people to connect.