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May 10, 2002

Monoliths Start to Crumble

Letter to Scott Rosenberg at Salon: I mostly agreed with today's piece: you finally broke down the "blogs are monolithic" meme which has been annoying me no end. The meme is "all blogs are Sullivan/Kausfiles/etc. except blogs that are navel-gazing journal-writing nonsense."

Of course, I have a (micro)chip on my shoulder. My Wi-Fi blog (80211b.weblogger.com) is the #1 match on Google for "802.11b" -- above the IEEE, above the manufacturers, above the Wi-Fi certification trade group WECA.

Google crowns credibility on blogs these days in three ways: one, by rewarding popularity; two, by offering prominence; three, by updating frequently. Many blog pages are the top match or two for seemingly popular mainstream topics. Google is often indexing blog home pages once a day.

This statement:
> I think the fire-in-the-belly of the blogging movement is less a matter of
> left or right than of a more free-floating anger at the professional media's
> penchant for making mistakes and not owning up to them. You hear it when
> weblog pioneer ____ _____ complains about the sloppiness and inaccuracy of
> newspaper coverage of the software industry. Or when Amsterdam-based blogger
> Adam Curry (the former MTV host) rails at the media for mischaracterizing the
> assassinated politican Pim Fortuyn as a Dutch le Pen.

I think you missed one aspect of this. Adam Curry is not just railing: he has his own direct sources which the mainstream media had access to as well, and ignored. He was railing both against the failure of the mainstream to stop pigeonholing and actually correctly characterize Fortuyn's policies (many of the characteristics were factually inaccurate, not just soundbites), and against the failure to understand the on-the-ground situation instead of relying on TV coverage of TV coverage of the events.

Of course, this email to you? It's blogged. (blog.glennf.com)

Posted by Glennf at May 10, 2002 9:13 AM

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