living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Friday, April 29, 2005 Starting a New Blog I am starting a new blog, which is a collection of Main Stream Media's coverage of Bloggosphere. Why bother? I realize I'm becoming a news junkie, spending whole mornings in Starbucks reading three newspapers, plus 4 to 5 magazines each week ( Maybe I should get a job or have a baby). I read in New Yorker sometime last year about a gentleman in NYC reading every page of NYtimes, and he was still 20 years behind even he has given up sports section. Such total consuming without result bothers me. I could never become a political pundict; but I am surely a good librarian, now I have this file box with 20 something hanging folders labeled with 'IT', 'Media', 'politics', 'science', 'Art', 'book', 'China', and surely 'blog', etc. Yes, in this digital age, I am building my paper clippings collation. It is fun so far. I guess it is in my human nature the joy of collecting something visible every day. Information explosion and the information overload aftermath overwhelmed me, I stopped reading anything on line or on hard copy for a while ( I mean news), and then I decide to return to tradition, letting elite news media guiding my news consumtion. And I am amazed by how many stories about blogs in the MSM, and how unimportant individual blogs is unless you are celebrity, or tied to celebrity. Mena Trott, the cofounder of Sixapart says (MIT technology review, Apr 2005), ' only six people in the world may want to know what you did for dinner last night, but if they are six people you know and concern, it (blog) is worth it'. That's true, and that's why I still keep blogging, I guess. Then my collection of MSM's coverage on bloggosphere stems from a curiosity of how millions of personal voices make news, if they can every make news. So far, news stories I collect is mainly about celebrity picks up blogs as news hobbies or business endorse blogs as new PR tool. I feel something is missing here: hey, how about these 10 million anonymous bloggers? The idea about blogs' impact on politics are their strengths on grassroots, the total of collective voices. There are technorati and blogpulse working on it and should have got more attention on people's agenda, but certainly it does not matter too much to MSM, who's still dedicated to voices from Capitol hill. I don't' know if the MSM's angle on blogs will change with the time being, but I sense it is something worth attention. Let's get real, MSM might sometimes be too slow or too cautious to pick up some explosive news lead, but without going to national news media, what news can be truely big and reach the majority of the population? posted by lmeimei @3:50 PM| permanent link| | |
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