Wednesday
(0)I frequently hear "Oh blogs, they don't really have any influence" and "What real difference do blogs make?" - Individually it is certainly true that popular blogs like Samizdata.net or even Godzilla-blogs like Instapundit are dwarfed in numbers of eyeballs they attract by major newspapers and TV networks... but just as a single piranha is not so fearsome a beast, a large school of them is another thing all together. When you look at a blog, you are just looking at a single node: you need to stand back and look at the network.
Tony Blankley over on Townhall.com has written an interesting article called A revolution in news:
As in all revolutions, first, the old order must be destroyed, then we will learn both the strengths and the shortcomings of the new order. We got a glimpse of the Internet blogger's strength this past week.For three quarters of a century until last week, when CBS News had entered a fight it had been an unfair mismatch for its adversary. The credibility, research capacity and gate-keeping monopoly of CBS would overwhelm its victim. But last week, it was breathtaking to see, moment by moment, the Internet blogger's advantage.
[...]
As each of these experts added their information to one blog, other bloggers would monitor it, pass it on, add a new fact, reorganize the analysis and synthesize new information. If new information proved wrong, it was corrected by yet another expert in the blogosphere. Mistakes were cheerfully admitted and instantly corrected.
[...]
The Internet bloggers picked CBS's story as clean as a school of piranhas would pick clean some poor water buffalo that wandered into their river.
This is the distributed intelligence that has been discussed here before. Blogs have in many ways been over-hyped but that is mostly because it is not blogs that are the revolutionary driver... it is the blogosphere.
Old media is learning the hard way to be sure of their facts because somewhere out there, sitting in front of a computer in Biloxi or Berlin or Bombay, is someone knows the subject you claim to be an expert in a damn sight better than you do with a whole lot of bloggers looking over his shoulder.
I love it. This is one of the most amazing stories of the year, and I've enjoyed every second of CBS being de-throned as a news source...he he he
Posted by Richard Easbey at September 15, 2004 07:19 PM
Some claim that the Internet is in the same league of significance for a free society as the invention of printing, as the alphabet............They are right. It is one of the best bits of good news in our time [hat tip to those who developed it] and needless to add, those who are hostile to a free society hate it. I do not know what the cyber equivalent of book burning is but expect it in a neighbourhood near you...........soon.
Posted by Chris Goodman at September 15, 2004 07:48 PM
I thought of that same school-of-piranhas metaphor, but after I had posted. I thought it was a great way to capture the building ferocity of the blog swarm last week.
In fact, I have a memo here proving I thought of it last week, typed on a Selectric in Times New Roman and copied a dozen times.
Posted by R C Dean at September 15, 2004 08:04 PM
Except for the fact that it seems they didn't
http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/blogosphere_tri.html
Posted by ian at September 15, 2004 09:54 PM
ian:
I read the link you posted, and several other of his (Mathew Yglesias) posts. He mostly makes assertions (especially about economics), not real arguments. Color me less than impressed.
Posted by Richard Easbey at September 15, 2004 10:50 PM
Has anyone first hand experience that tallied with what got reported in the papers/tv? Ever?
The reason so much 'celebrity' news gets printed is that no investigation or fact-finding is needed, which fits in nicely with the amount of work journo's put in.
Posted by zmollusc at September 15, 2004 11:01 PM
Instapundit had more than 300,000 pageviews a day. What was the circulation of the Times of London ? And all those readers read instapundit, not just the sport page or the financial news.
Posted by Jacob at September 15, 2004 11:06 PM
This has been a truly amazing experience, and it's the second in this Presidential campaign. Our major papers and network news also tried to kill the Swift Boat Vets' allegations about Kerry's Vietnam years. Bloggers broke that one, too, but not with the lightning speed and ferocity of the current CBS debacle.
The pirhana thing is about right. Also, lots of the back-and-forth on this has been down blind alleys, not quite right, etc. The important thing is that the story as a whole moved forward at a steady pace. Arbiters were selected, completely informally, by the bloggers themselves. They're acting as the clearinghouses for the consensus as it's emerged. Wheat gets separated from chaff in the process, but no one is excluded. Credibility is earned by good reasoning from known facts. Overreaching is penalized. The cow can be devoured one small mouthful at a time. Many of the experts now at the center of the controversy aren't bloggers, and didn't even know there was a debate until someone called them for their input.
One thing that many have missed is that there's been an important crossover from bloggers to cable news (led by Fox), radio and a few second-tier newspapers. The Swift Boat story took a while. This story, though, got the Washington Post onboard quickly, as well as ABC, one of the three major broadcast networks. None, though, could have afforded the public speculation and fact-winnowing that the network of bloggers provided them.
zmollusc asked about experience vs. reported "truth." My experience with 60 Minutes (mostly economic issues) is that their reporting is atrocious.
Posted by Dave Sheridan at September 16, 2004 03:55 AM
Pyjamaranhas?
Such a tragedy about the mismatch between American spelling and proper spelling. Spoils it completely for me.
Posted by Brian Micklethwait at September 17, 2004 03:06 PM
