Blooger Run-Around

Bloggers Unite! You've gotta admit, Bloogers have it really nice right now. Hailed as the "new media," they can do anything from launch new products, like the Nikon D80 campaign, to ruin them, like with the Microsoft laptop scandal. Current media powerhouses have created entire wings devoted to understanding and shaping the blogosphere. Countless new hires have found jobs an new media specialists, when in essence, all they do is send messages to their friends (OK, so that's not really true, but its sorta-kinda true). But I wonder how different from the "old guard" (which I will use for traditional media from here on) are these new cyber-journalists?

Lets consider this. From a brief and entirely unscientific survey, I have deciphered that the vast majority of bloggers get their information from the old guard. That is to say, google alerts and the like. Now if traditional media can control these things, how can we not say that they are somewhat controlling bloogers? If you control the flow of water, you can determine, with reliable results, how the firefighters will put out the fire. The exception to this rule is that certain bloggers are able to sniff out their own information and report it, sometimes before traditional media can. These people, however, must have either a great situation, or contacts into the old guard world. Again, they tie into the system that we are trying to circumvent. Does this bother anyone else?

Of course, the main benefit of blogging is the discussion. The ability for anyone in the country (who has Internet access) to immediately react and respond to any topic of their choice. See a story that impacts you? Write a scorching review or rave about it to your wit's end. But the old guard are fast approaching this level of interaction. It started with call-in polls about the reactions to stories, now you can leave a message on message boards for most up-to-date media outlets from anywhere in the world.

I don't know, maybe this is unfounded skepticism on my part, but I just cant shake the fact that all this hype is really not to much to talk about. But hey, millions and millions of bloggers can't be wrong, can we?