I wasn't at the conference, so I can't comment on the specifics that Jack Shafer references, but I'm finding it hard to disagree with anything that's written in this Slate column. Many of the first bloggers, in addition to being geeks, were trained in journalism or writing, and that pedigree alone indicates that blogs will be one part of an increasingly rich media sphere in the years to come.
Pitting blogs against any other medium is the same reductive, zero-sum, overly simplistic irrationality that many bloggers like to ascribe to the alleged mainstream media. To reiterate: Any institution which you might consider to be a "media outlet" is actually comprised of many individual humans. Some of them will be flawed and make mistakes, and most of them will probably be alright. I'm fairly positive that there's no "Associate Editor of Blog Elimination" at any periodicals that are being published today.
That doesn't mean I don't love blogs and think they're going to have an important impact. It just means I love magazines and books, too. (Newspapers are okay, as long as they're online.)
It's worth noting that I'm speaking to the content of Shafer's article. Whether Shafer is accurately reflecting the tone or attitude of the conference is another matter, and Jay Rosen's words indicate that may not be the case. So the key here is that the issue raised is valid, though it may have been prompted by a misreading (deliberate or not) of the event.
Speaking of individual human beings, you gonna help me with turn journos into bloggers during the strike or what? Granted, signs from the comical point to hopeless.
Sorry about the personal nature of the comment, but I know you're overwhelmed with email.
Anil: Thank you for this post, and the care taken. I want you to know that I agree that "blogs will be one part of an increasingly rich media sphere in the years to come."
More than just agreeing, I have been showing that this is the case by, for example, tracking (in great journalistic detail) the example of the Greensboro, NC News-Record, owned by Landmark Communications, a mainstream, supposed-to-be-profitable daily newspaper (i.e., Big Media in that town) led by a blogging editor, and determined to build a new kind of online news and public affairs site where ""blogs will be one part of an increasingly rich media sphere" founded on a more open contract with users, who will be credited with knowing some stuff too. The sort of thing I think you would be excited about. (I will have something new soon on Greensboro and the issue of the free, oopen, linkable newspaper archive.)
You can find my reporting here, then here, and here, and that is just a portion of it.
So to serve as a foil for Jack Shafer's "lesson" that the mainstream media will adjust is just a little odd since I have been tracking that adjustment rather carefully at my weblog, PressThink.
Too be informed that it's ridiculous to talk of bloggers vanquishing Big Media is, likewise, a little odd since it formed the premise of my essay, Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over, which was written specifically for the conference and says it straight out (probably 20 different times): the two will learn to compliment each other, and it's already starting to happen. There is no "war."
This is also the Big Message of my reports after the conference about what people learned: here, here, and here.
Associate Editor of Blog Elimination
I would like to apply for this job.