flogging the blogs won’t clear the fog

I’ve been thinking about blogs lately as I moved to an entirely software-driven site here. Doing this has made me think more about content, since I don’t have the burden of also having to be the designer this time around. This has, of course, been true even moreso since people read the feeds intead of the web page, but I digress. Even though this is only marginally library related, with all the blogging and journalism hubub going on, it’s worth paying attention to, a progressive view of what blogs bring to journalism, and why it might matter by Sam Smith.

Tom Paine, Ben Franklin, and Frederick Douglass did not have press passes either, nor did anyone give them credentials before they commenced their unlicensed practice of the First Amendment. And where does one go these for such a license anyway? Usually to the government or to a committee comprised of employees of large media corporations whose interest is not in dispensing news but in owning its profits and who hire numerous lobbyists to manipulate the same White House and Congress their ace reporters are covering.

[thanks chris]