possibly noteworthy wrote:
There is some truth here.

The larger problem with blogs, it seems to me, is quality. Most of them are pretty awful. Many, even some with large followings, are downright appalling.

Meh. I found this article asinine when I first read it last week and was hoping it'd pass quietly into the abyss, but I guess not.

I find it painfully ironic that an opinion piece which goes on and on about the lack of originality, research and genuine critical thinking in the blog world, itself offers essentially no elucidation or original thoughts of any kind. Bloggers and technologists have been self analyzing the echo chamber effect and the reality of a low signal to noise ratio from the very start.

That's *why* places like Memestreams and Digg and technorati and all the various social networks exist -- we're trying to find the signal in the noise. If one wishes to make an argument that we're not there yet and need to do better, well, gee whiz, thanks. We know that, and no one's more aware of it than the bloggers who write their piece and want it to be read.

Mr. Rago could have explored the ways in which social networks and collaborative filtering are trying to improve the situation, but instead makes a passing gesture at how chaotic the scene is.

He glibly jots "there's more 'choice'," implying that choice isn't necessarily a good thing, but not going any deeper. Well, again, smart people already know that. We've read Schwartz, among others, and at least an acknowledgment that it's not saying anything new would've gone a long way towards softening my opinion of this piece. But that would have undermined his whole silly point.

Again, a lot of true things are said here, but little to none of it could be called original.

He stabs at the political blogs and cites the anonymous critic, saying "Some critics reproach the blogs for the coarsening and increasing volatility of political life." Again, little analysis is offered. Is it really that the blogs are responsible for this effect or merely a response to a coarsening and volatility already being propagated by our actual leaders in congress and the White House? Or is it merely that when you give voice where there was none before, it will always start off shrill? Those of us who care about this space actually have thought about these things, and it's disingenuous and a little insulting to parade about as some kind of whistle blower when the "industry," such as it is, is already largely working on the very problems Mr. Rago points out.

Again, he's not wrong, just hypocritical, bandying some lovely vocabulary in service to the tiniest shred of analysis, reducing what might have been an insightful work into an apology for the MSM and a useless attack on a scene which already knows it's own weaknesses.

We're told that "[j]ournalism requires journalists," a wonderful and true statement, but also one that I read, here, on a blog, months and months ago.

"[P]retty awful" indeed.

RE: Why Blogs Suck | WSJ