News judgment
: Harry disagrees with my point about the news judgment of news organizations vs. the blogosphere relating to Iraq. It’s a fair disagreement. But since he’s quibbling with my argument, I’ll quibble with his example: Harry pulls the numbers game to compare two stories: Three Iranians are arrested vs. 400-500 Bangladeshi’s lost in a ferry accident. First, I’ll argue, that’s bogus because one is a movement that can affect the stability of the world; the other is a tragic accident but just that: an accident. But even that’s beside the point. As Harry says, any individual blogger does not pretend to present a full and balanced news report; a blogger blogs what he or she feels like blogging. But I’m not comparing one blogger to the news business; I’m comparing bloggers in aggregate as a collective brain against the collective judgement of the news business. That’s what I find fascinating with this one story as an example: Blogdex shows high interest in the Iran story; news sites show low interest. You could argue that one of them is wrong.
It would be interesting for an academic out there to chart the top stories on, say, Blogdex vs. the top stories on Google News (which, though automated, tracks professional news organs). I say you’d then be tracking the interests of the audience (with bloggers as an imperfect proxy that is improving as the universe grows) vs. the interests of the pros.
