{"id":3138,"date":"2008-11-10T07:48:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-10T07:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/11\/10\/imminent-death-of-the-blogosph\/"},"modified":"2008-11-10T07:48:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-10T07:48:00","slug":"imminent-death-of-the-blogosph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/11\/10\/imminent-death-of-the-blogosph\/","title":{"rendered":"Imminent Death of the Blogosphere Predicted, .GIF at 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

The announcement of Cosmic Variance’s sell-out<\/a> has prompted some people to link to Nicholas Carr’s lament for days gone by<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there’s good reason for the teeth-gnashing. While there continue to be many blogs, including a lot of very good ones, it seems to me that one would be hard pressed to make the case that there’s still a “blogosphere.” That vast, free-wheeling, and surprisingly intimate forum where individual writers shared their observations, thoughts, and arguments outside the bounds of the traditional media is gone. Almost all of the popular blogs today are commercial ventures with teams of writers, aggressive ad-sales operations, bloated sites, and strategies of self-linking. Some are good, some are boring, but to argue that they’re part of a “blogosphere” that is distinguishable from the “mainstream media” seems more and more like an act of nostalgia, if not self-delusion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s a lot here to annoy me, starting with the implicit assumption that blogging is supposed to be punditry, and an alternative to the “mainstream media.” He does at least nod in the direction of noting the irony of a “blogs these days are just noise, and get off of my lawn” post from somebody who only discovered blogging in 2005.<\/p>\n

Mostly, though, I think this falls into the Nader Fallacy, namely that anything associated with a corporation is bad. There are different ways to sell out, and some are more problematic than others. In particular, I don’t think the move that Cosmic Variance is making, to Discover is a problem.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not all “commercial” blogs are a Problem. I think there’s a major difference between sites like Gawker or Engadget and things like Cosmic Variance joining Discover, or Andrew Sullivan being sponsored by the Atlantic<\/a>, or, say, ScienceBlogs.<\/p>\n

I’m really sort of baffled by the suggestion that Sean and company moving to Discover is another indicator that Blogging Has Lost Its Innocent Charm, or whatever. Discover, like Seed and The Atlantic, is collecting a bunch of blogs, and giving them a bigger platform. They’re not changing the character of what gets posted, any more than Seed is dictating what I post, or the management at The Atlantic is forcing Andrew Sullivan to write what they want.<\/p>\n

I will grant that this blog is a very different thing than it was before I joined ScienceBlogs, but this has happened because I wanted to change. I haven’t gotten any pressure from the Corporate Masters to alter what I write about, or the way I write (I did once inadvertently break an informal embargo, and was asked to take a post down for a while, but that’s a different thing).<\/p>\n

If Sean and the gang were being replaced by some Gawker-style blogging sweatshop, that would be a problem, mostly because Gawker’s house style bugs the shit out of me. That’s not what’s happening, though– they’re just moving the same set of people, writing about the same topics, to a new home. All that’s changing is the wrapper, not the contents.<\/p>\n

Indiscriminately lumping together all magazine-sponsored blogs as something Bad is just foolish. What matters about a blog is the content of the posts, not the banner graphic at the top of the page, or the presence or absence of ads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The announcement of Cosmic Variance’s sell-out has prompted some people to link to Nicholas Carr’s lament for days gone by: Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there’s… Continue reading Imminent Death of the Blogosphere Predicted, .GIF at 11<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}