Classic Edition: Wanted: Fewer Pundit Blogs

One of the bloggers quoted in Simon Owens’s demographics post states flat-out that “I basically don’t give a crap about the non-political blogosphere.” I found this interesting, because I used to read almost exclusively political blogs, but my opinion has shifted to be almost exactly the opposite of this: I really find it hard to give a crap about most political blogging these days.

Some of this is just outrage fatigue, but I’ve been at least ambivalent about the whole blog punditry thing for years. This is a Classic Edition post originally from July 2002, barely a month after I started the original Uncertain Principles. It’s probably linkrotted all to hell and back– I haven’t checked all the many links, and don’t plan to– but I still like the basic point. Even if I no longer read a lot of the sites referenced.

Also, consider this a request for pointers to well-written non-pundit blogs about people in unusual lines of work. You know where the comments are.

There’s been a fair bit said about Salon’s new blog site. As I’ve spent an awful lot of time droning on about physics the past few days, and don’t quite feel up to another school voucher post (I’ll get to it, but probably not until the weekend), I’ll make a few comments about this, and put off the second part of the Second Law business until tomorrow.

I share some of Ginger Stampley’s puzzlement as to what, exactly, you get out of running your web log with Salon that you wouldn’t get from setting it up on your own. I also generally agree with her opinion that this is probably a good thing (leaving aside the question of who will have the time to read all these new web logs… Other than Glenn Reynolds, that is…). Sturgeon’s Law will still apply, but any increase in the total amount of stuff will inevitably lead to an increase in the amount of stuff that’s not crap (yeah, I know he originally said “crud” not “crap,” but “crap” sounds better, damnit…).

The comments I specifically wanted to reply to were over at The Truth Laid Bear, where the Salon announcement is deemed Good in reference to an older post, calling for “Soccer Mom” web logs. There are a number of points here I want to take issue with, starting with:

To keep to what I know best — the political end of the blogosphere — I know what Stephen and Glenn and Mickey and Andrew have to say about homeland security. What I want to know is what the legendary soccer moms have to say about it.

Ultimately, I think I’m really not all that interested in having a flood of new web logs wherein “Soccer Moms” hold forth about homeland security. They’ll have a slightly different perspective, true, but you know what? We’ve already got a whole host of web logs devoted to half-assed pontificating about politics. I think that I’d actually be more interested in a well-written web log where a “Soccer Mom” held forth on, well, soccer and motherhood.

That’s a large part of why, as someone I found in my referrer logs noted, I go “on and on and on and on and on” about science. It’s interesting to me, I hope it’s vaguely interesting to others, and it’s something that you don’t see a whole lot of in the blogging world. I can’t resist the temptation to occasionally hold forth about politics, but impressed as I am with my own cleverness, I’m not sure I really believe my political posts are any more insightful than those of Jim Henley or Patrick Nielsen Hayden, let alone people who do this for a living. And I know I rarely put things as well as the pseudonymous Charles Dodgson, and wish I could match Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s stinging indictment of American politics (or, for that matter, her cooking ability, or her very funny essay on her excommunication from the Mormon church, though I think I could live without the ability to find pictures of Jesus eating roast guinea pig… But now we’re getting way off track…). The one thing I know for sure I can do that these other people can’t is talk about what it’s like to be a physicist, and try to give people some idea of how a scientist views the world– in other words, I can talk about my job.

Some of the best web logs out there are the ones about what other people do for a living. I’ve mentioned Derek Lowe’s Lagniappe several times, and his reflections on medical chemistry were one of the things that convinced me this would be a good idea. Sydney Smith’s Medpundit is also excellent (and will be added to the links bar the next time I fiddle with the template) for informed commentary on medical issues. I don’t have the highest opinion of economics in general, and don’t always understand the details he posts, but Brad DeLong’s site is another great one for finding out how people in a different business see the world (and I’m not just saying that because he said nice things about my web log…). While his political stuff tends to grate on me, Steven Den Beste does provide some interesting insights into how engineers see the world. And the True Porn Clerk Stories journal that’s hit the weblogging world like some sort of virus is just terrific for this sort of thing, which is the reason why it’s been linked so many times.

The “blogosphere” is overrun with journalists and pundits and wannabe journalists and wannabe pundits presenting their view of the world. We’re swamped in political opinion pieces, most of which end up looking very similar, even when they come from different parts of the political spectrum. Salon’s new program is bound to add more political web logs to the flood, and may even, as Ginger Stampley notes, produce the lefty Instapundit that Jim Henley’s looking for.

But what I’d like to see is more occupational blogging. I’m getting tired or journalists and pundits, and people pretending to be journalists and pundits. Let’s get some more people writing about what they do for a living in other areas– teachers talking about education, editors talking about editing, caterers talking about catering, detective talking about detecting, garbagemen talking about trash collecting. 90% of such web logs will be crap, of course, but the 10% that are good will probably be fascinating in the same way that “True Porn Clerk Stories” is. And it’s almost got to be more interesting than yet another round of “adjectivePundits” talking only about politics.