You're blogged

The Sarcastic Journalist was indeed fired a year ago, so it's the old guard at the Herald-Spun with whom I agreed.

It is a curiosity that some seem to think that the lines of code that produced the blogging product have somehow staked out new first amendment ground or are the basis for declaring some form of special worker's rights. That's silly. It's publishing, that's all. The "great unwashed" have always been able to publish and experience immediate regret. Remember Jerry Maguire's "Mission Statement"?

What's different now is the cost (none) and the push-the-button-and-the-whole-world-can-see-it aspect --- literally. It's the distribution. That's what makes it so powerful and will quickly re-establish the role of journalism as well. Without some form of filtering, gatekeeping or sorting, all the blogs will quickly become of fog of chatter. Raw data only becomes information in the hands of a capable programmer. At least all those photocopies cost Jerry some money, plus all the effort to hand them all out. For many, that would mean that they'd have to really believe in something to part with the cash, time and effort. What would Jerry have done with a blog?!

So perhaps the question on the minds of publishers is whether or not blogging can "show them the money?"