Blog Revolt over Blog Revolt
An interesting new blog from David Kline, the writer behind “Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture”….well the blog is good but I’ve taken one look at the list of people he interviewed for his book and it just makes me shake my head. If you want to know how blogging is changing the way things work I’d go out and find 2 dozen people writting on Blogspot, Xanga, Live Journal, Spaces, and not focus exclusively on the A-List, many of who have entrenched ideas or backgrounds in the main stream media in the first place. Its a view of the world that always looks at top down instead of button up. Sure, there’s some good people on this list who probably contributed to a sound book (when Calacanis speaks for example it’s nearly always interesting) but where’s the diversity of people that make the blogosphere the wonderful place it is? Are we truly facing mono-cultural impersialism imposed by an elite few as suggested by some of the BlogHer crowd or is it simply an America media obsessed with a few whilst the rest of the world gets on with things (ie is it simply an American thing?).
You thoughts, as always, are welcomed.
me thinks it’s more to do with laziness – ie: go straight to the A-list rather than sniff around the blogosphere for unique stories and views on blogging.
Lazy, maybe. I’m betting the publisher thought it would sell more books. It probably will. Who wants to buy a book to find out what I think?
ME is probably correct but isn’t blogging really about all the unknowns who are producing something worth reading every day?
Well, I’m the guy that interviewed all those A-List bloggers for my book that you were so kind to mention, so allow me to explain my motivations.
First, you are 100% right — not 99%, but 100% right — that the real impact of blogging and other new citizen-created media is that they give potentially EVERYONE in society a voice now. In essence, we’re talking about a revolt of the voiceless against the heedless — in politics, business, and culture. And if you have the chance to read my book, you’ll see that the single most prominent and consistent theme running through it is, to borrow an old phrase, that “the masses make history” and that what gives blogging its power is that its a grassroots, bottom-up phenomenon still in the making.
(Check out my latest post on how ordinary citizen consumers are using blogs to reshape the ways companies to business at http://www.blogrevolt.com.)
At the same time, I faced the challenge: What’s the best way to show what blogging can do and has done to people’s lives? I could interview Joe Blow from Nowheresville and have him tell his story (which few people would be interested in hearing about). Or I could interview Wil Wheaton, a fairly well-known actor known to the public who used his blogging to reinvent himself as a writer. Since more people are going to want to read about Wil Wheaton than Joe Blow, more people will read my book and I won’t have wasted 100,000 words writing about an issue I think is so important but no one is going to read about.
Also, some of the most powerful ways that blogging changes society are revealed in the stories of people like liberal blogger DailyKos or GI blogger Colby Buzzel, whose blogging work had such an impact it made them famous. If you want to show how ordinary people can use blogging to make a real impact on society, who better to interview than someone like Kos?
(We may be sick to death of stories about him, but the majority of book buyers and citizens in America have never heard of him.)
Finally, if you’re trying to write about whether or not blogging can be a sustainable business, who better to interview than Calacanis and Denton and Battelle — along with others involved in actually trying to build such businesses?
Anyway, I hope to clarifies some of my motivations. I’m happy to answer any other questions if you have any.