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Are Blogs the Medium of the Future?

posted on February 17, 2006


Doing anything for the next 15 mins? That’s how long you’ll need to read the Financial Times article on the rise of blogging as a publishing medium and challenger to print.

You may want to wait to read it for when you’re wide awake and have your wits about you. Dem der FT jernolists use a lot of mighty fancy words. ;-)

But as with any revolution, we must ask whether we are being sold a naked emperor. Is blogging really an information revolution? Is it about to drive the mainstream news media into oblivion? Or is it just another crock of virtual gold – a meretricious equivalent of all those noisy internet start-ups that were going to build a brave “new economyâ€? a few years ago?

Hat tip to Pamela Parker.


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  • http://www.seoposition.com Brian Gilley

    Simply put, the blogs able to beat major papers to the punch and publish timely news will keep gaining momentum. One recent example is Jensense.com (Jennifer Slegg’s blog), who reported MSN’s new contextual advertising model, ContentAds, before any other mainstream newspapers. Because bloggers like her are completely and directly connected to those niche markets, they’ll almost always get the lead and post it before newspaper sites.

    The quote from that FT article you posted can be shot down in many ways as well… “Or is it just another crock of virtual gold – a meretricious equivalent of all those noisy internet start-ups that were going to build a brave “new economyâ€? a few years ago?
    Fantastic, timely, and cutting edge blogs are more than any “noisy Internet start-up” simply because they transmit news and information, not some fly-by-night service or product of 1999 or 2000, just hoping to make a buck. I should know – got laid off from two entertainment Internet startups in San Francisco almost back to back in those days. Not much for a business model, but news will never die – and blogs are lightning fast at getting and posting the news.
    Yes, many blogs will just “exist” but the great ones will take market share and traffic from some newspapers not able to keep up with them. After all, blogs aren’t much different than newspapers at all (at least the ones I think of) when it comes to reporting cutting edge information.
    There’s a real (new) buzz for sites like Blogburst.com which are now allowing syndication from blogs with top stories/info to the WashingtonPost, SF Cronicle, an Houston Cronicle, among others. In other words, more traditional papers are realizing that in order to sustain readers, they better tap into blogs to keep truly fresh content.

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