Are Bloggers Bringing The Blogosphere Down?
February 4, 2010
I see what Andrew Keen is saying. The first chapter to his much-ballyhooed book “The Cult of the Amateur” is all about how the internet, with its fast-paced flow of user-generated information, fosters a culture in which the voices of a thousand amateur bloggers drown out experts who might be better qualified to write on the topic at hand. Keen is concerned that “nurturing talent requires work, capital, expertise, investment”, and he believes that today’s bloggers don’t have the tools necessary to deliver content that can enrich our lives as well as experts.
One thing Keen misses out on is how the sheer pace of the information flow can affect content. In his article titled “The Business Of Blogging is Ruining The Medium”, tech blogger Dan Rayburn explains that bloggers who “write for headlines”, i.e. try to post about the latest-breaking news before anyone else, get more hits and more attention than bloggers who take more time to research their posts; however, bloggers who write for headlines often skimp on the quality of their content. According to Rayburn, too many bloggers are using the same quotes and images as everyone else in their rush to get the story out as fast as possible. “Most of them don’t take the time to do anything but report on the news, but provide no real analysis,” he explains. Blogging is supposed to be an outlet for people to provide their own perspective on the world. So what happens when amateur bloggers, untrained in the art of analyzing information and drawing their own nuanced conclusions, are pressured to get out more stories, faster than everyone else?
Andrew Keen realized that the content side of journalistic writing would change drastically with blogs; however, he never really thought of this twist. Is this fast-paced endless repetition simply, as Rayburn suggests, “the nature of this booming business”? Can blogs sustain themselves under the kind of pressure that is being mounted on them from new angles? Only time will tell. Knowing how fast the digital world moves, it won’t be long before we’ll have a clearer picture.
February 9, 2010 at 2:48 am
Very smart connection to Rayburn and his point about how the breakneck pace of blogging – not the decline in blogger talent – is having a negative effect on content. You could even go one step farther in a comparison with Keen. He worries about the way that amateur culture is making web enterprises less profitable. Actually, as Rayburn points out, it is the drive for profit that is affecting the blog content, as writers rush to get posts out as fast as possible, thus getting more attention and driving more traffic to the blog. Keen mourns the fact that user-generated content trumps businesses trying to generate revenue, but the influence of business on blogging has actually been detrimental in the case you raise.