The nonstory
: What a crock today’s NY Times delivers: A story that tries to trot out page 476 from the journalism cliche book and relate it to blogs: Are blogs male-dominated?
That kind of quotathink does not work here for two simple reasons:
(1) Anyone of any gender who wants to start a blog can. Nobody will stop them. So you can’t argue that some bigger power structure — blog executives, the old blog boys club — is stopping them. The only thing stopping nonbloggers from blogging is themselves. That, after all, is the whole point of this new medium: It’s anybody’s. It’s everybody’s.
(2) There are many, many great women bloggers. I don’t need to start listing them. You know them.
Even the writer has to admit that there is no frigging point to her story: “But women are, in fact, blogging in big numbers.”
So why write it? Why print it? Just because it fits?
: Says Frankenstein in the comments: “I think that the writer just wanted to increase her hits.” My, how cynical. How true.
: Glenn Reynolds (who corrected my grammar with a discreet elipses… I just corrected my almost-a-double-negative myself) says I may be a bit tough on the Times story, but then he takes them to task for not interviewing more women, since there are many hereabouts.
: Want women? Try Elizabeth Spiers, Meg Hourigan, Moira Breen, Asparagirl, Jane Galt, Andrea Harris, Natalie Solent, Amy Langfield, Kathy Shaidle, Emmanuelle Richard, Joanne Jacobs, Denise Howell, Rebecca Blood, Janice Abrahams, HolyWeblog, Amy Welborn, lots o’ libertarians, Lynn Sislo, Rossi, Moxie, Dawn Olsen, Jenny the librarian, Shiloh Bucher, Gillian Hadley, most of the Kitchen Cabinet, and the woman behind MSNBC’s Weblogs, Joan Connell, just to name a few.
: Want to talk quotas? How come there aren’t more middle-aged men here? Everytime I talk to bloggers, I feel old. There has to be a law against that.
