Yada yada blog yada
: The blog panel at the West Side Y on which I blathered the other night will be on C-SPAN tonight, Friday, at 8:40pm ET, 11:40pm ET & 5:30am ET. I know you’ll want to watch all three times.
10 responses to “Yada yada blog yada”
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I’m sorry, but just to clarity, because this is the third or fourth time, the blog blather panel was at the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y, not the West Side Y. The YMHA, not the YMCA. They’re within blocks of each other, but completely different. And often mixed up.
Thank you. I’ll be TiVo-ing.. -
Heh heh! Don’t pull that self-deprecation thing on us, Jeff: I thought your contributions to the dialogue were masterpieces of the conversational spazz attack! ;-) “If you don’t wanna blog, fine! I wanna!”
I like your exasperated take on the “digital divide” question, too. You’re right. Hey, even the Iraqi insurgency is on Blogspot these days (at iraq4ever.blogspot.com) — a paid account, written in Arabic.
This guy from campaigndesk.org yammering about “the top of the curve” is full of it, though. It’s the Technorati mentality: the blog as Nielsen box. Ever notice that the way to get play on technorati is to link to a story from CNN, the Post, Salon, etc.? Where’s the alternative in that?
What blogs need IMHO is granular social-network searchability: blogosphere tool, please find all translators who live in large cities and blog in French, Spanish, or Portuguese about poetry and mechanical engineering and know about philately.
This IS micropublishing, right? Instead of trying to create the blogosophere in the image of broadcast television, we should be trying to locate and serve the micromarkets: teenage Goth girls who love math, Mormons for liberation theology, supply-side economists who play the bass, whatever. You know what I think has the most potential in this direction? http://del.icio.us!
Anyway, thanks to C-SPAN for saving me the schlep from Brooklyn. -
I took a short nap after work, and upon waking up I switch on the television (already conveniently tuned to CSPAN) and had a ‘blink blink’ doubletake moment… “hey, is that Jeff Jarvis?” :)
So I started watching at the point where you-all are discussing ‘where are all the girl bloggers?’ where the other panelist falls into the fallacy that the only blogs that matter are the high-ranked wonky political/news/opinion sites… thanks for rebutting that characterization a bit, because that’s my pet peeve in the entire blogosphere discussion! For example (besides my own on hiatus for a couple more days), I currently host the domains/blogs of two young ladies – and I’ve been on the phone three times already today with two other women who have become very good friends of mine who I first got to know through their blogs. But because their content is more personal and not overtly political (or link-and-comment), they’re dismissed out of hand by those like Mr. Radosh.
He seems to get twitchy at the idea that blogs may be sullied by being used to talk about ‘Lindsay Lohan’s breasts’, but just this morning one of my best friends used her LiveJournal (two-thirds female) to talk at some length about breasts… about American society’s preoccupation with them, that is. Just because she doesn’t link to some new scientific study or try to shoehorn her views into some partisan framework, does that make her insight any less valid than a popular political blogger? Too many people seem to think so. :(
Framing the blogsample that way is going to skew the results: just from browsing my own blogroll, its the guys who have the issue blogs and the girls who have the personal blogs; and beyond that it’s also a matter of presentation… male blogs are nearly uniformly spare and utilitarian (and boring) in their ‘style’, and female blogs are much more focused on design and layout and being graphically attractive. -
Well, just caught perhaps the last 15 minutes of this broadcast (someone OUGHT to, gently, instruct Geraldine Sealey to cut down on the “you knows”) … and have to say you were so totally (also a rather icky term) not in league with the rest of the panel. And that is meant as a compliment.
I do believe an “elderly” gray-bearded liberal, with changing views, is eminently more qualified to assess the current blog situation than… well the rest of the panel.
Thanks for a fun fifteen minutes. -
I caught the C-Span panel on blogs and that brought me here tonight. I was aware something called blogs existed, but I had never looked at one before. I am enjoying the exchange of political ideas. I think breasts are also worth talking about.
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Jeff’s opinions and answers MADE me check out this site. I rarely venture out to the net anymore to find new blogs or BBS’s, but this was a rare instance.
I agreed for the most part with what you had to say Jeff, but I think I agreed more with HOW you said it.
That sort of leads in to my hopes (and fears) for more video within blogs. I wish it was talked about more in the C-SPAN segment, Jeff only touched on it.
I guess its inevitable, especially with the advent of realistic fiber to the home.
I believe that one of the pro’s is that it will eliminate many of the misunderstandings involved with the written word, especially in BLOGS. (I cant tell you how many times this has happened to me!) This was something that one of the audience members brought to attention about the intended use of journalism, proper grammar, etc… among other things. (I am no stranger to DE-grammar… :))
But I suppose there is also the danger of politics in general (my main point) with the addition of video. For example, Mr. Radosh had some excellent points in my opinion and I thought was holding back his tech side to the best of his ability, yet…he was not the most agreeable person to watch. And by this I mean his seeming acidic attitude, and so on.
You get my point, Jeff was definetly on a different level than the rest of the panel, but this was more than just because of his knowledge on the subject.
I kind of wanted to see this taken to the next level in discussion, as I have a BBS and love technology, if used correctly, but knowing full well that many problems could ensue. Before the Telephone, letters were the norm, and what type of people wrote those? Is this an analogy to the BLOG that will be?
Any good links or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
DP -
As the billions who watch C-Span at 12 am will be flooding this blog soon, I’ll get in line ;>. Just want to say thanks for sticking up for the elbow and attempting to drive home the disparity between traditional/mainstream journalism and the blogosphere. I agree 100% that fragmentation is good. It’s my belief that it is simply the natural course. As times get tight, more want to be heard..even if it means just talking about their cat, the blog is a tool to do so. In the long run I’m sure a much bigger picture will develop. BTW, not only did I flip the tube on and see bloggers hashing it out, but your domain name also gave me a start. It’s one letter shy of buzzmachines.com, a tool I use often to produce music. Oddly enough the set up of that program and the linking of blogs to create a bigger picture have some some similarities.
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Interesting comments from the panel.
The question of the number of blogs as a measure of their influence should have been challenged.
Do we say the NYT lacks influence because there is only one of it?
It would be interesting to find out how many individuals read (pick a metric you like) five out of the top twenty blogs twice a week.
The relationship of blogs to traditional journalism is, among other things, to tell the journos in large and immediate numbers, “We know better already.” To force corrections. -
Caught you on C-Span. You got my vote hands down. I discovered blogs after 9/11. After the embedded journalists left the troops, the soldier and Iraqi blogs are the only unfiltered information available. Who do you want to hear from – a talking head, political science and/or journalism grad, or a twenty-year veteran Sergeant? I want to hear from the
