In an effort to further elucidate my thoughts on the comparison of bloggers and journalists at the DNC, i wrote an op-ed for Salon - The New Blogocracy. It’s a follow-up to my earlier blog entry called Demeaning Bloggers.
I agree that blogging and journalism are different, but I don't think named the fundamental difference. Yes, a newspaper aims at objectivity and a blogger doesn't. But, a newspaper aims to do more than lay out the facts of a story. It aims to be recognized as an authority on which stories are and are not relevant. A blog on the other hand, is only concerned with reaching the audience that finds it relevant, while being fully aware that not everyone will or should find it relevant.
The blogosphere, then should enable audiences to find the blogs that they will most likely find relevant. Tools like comments/trackback/blogrolls are widely adopted because they allow for audience-blog matching. But, these tools are about as useful at matching readers to blogs as the first search engines were at matching queries with webpages.
Collaborative filtering of blogs and their articles, through voluntary tracking of readers' and bloggers' behavior would allow more blogs to find their audiences more efficiently.
www.last.fm is a simple example collaborative filtering that matches music with listeners. Bloglines is doing a coarse form of collaborative filtering to match blogs and audiences. Does anyone know if its being done better anywhere else?
1. Abe on July 29, 2004 3:37 PM writes...
I agree that blogging and journalism are different, but I don't think named the fundamental difference. Yes, a newspaper aims at objectivity and a blogger doesn't. But, a newspaper aims to do more than lay out the facts of a story. It aims to be recognized as an authority on which stories are and are not relevant. A blog on the other hand, is only concerned with reaching the audience that finds it relevant, while being fully aware that not everyone will or should find it relevant.
The blogosphere, then should enable audiences to find the blogs that they will most likely find relevant. Tools like comments/trackback/blogrolls are widely adopted because they allow for audience-blog matching. But, these tools are about as useful at matching readers to blogs as the first search engines were at matching queries with webpages.
Collaborative filtering of blogs and their articles, through voluntary tracking of readers' and bloggers' behavior would allow more blogs to find their audiences more efficiently.
www.last.fm is a simple example collaborative filtering that matches music with listeners. Bloglines is doing a coarse form of collaborative filtering to match blogs and audiences. Does anyone know if its being done better anywhere else?
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