MediaVidea

Blogs as magazines: the flip side

Blogs such as Engadget, Autoblog, Techcrunch and its 'arch enemy' Valleywag are more like magazines; the matter has been covered on this blog before. The blog owners prefer to call these properties multi-author blogs but that is pure wool.

Goes without saying that it is good thing, blogs becoming part of the mainstream, but ironical, no poetic, when a lame poll put ‘blog’ as a high-flying irritant.

On the flip side, the ‘magablogs’ suffer from the same disease that their print counterparts suffer from: toeing the big-pocket advertisers’ line, hyping up big company products as revolutionary items (something that also says much about the mainstream journalists’ understanding of technology). The ‘magablogs’ are no different from the News 1.0 sites like CNet either.

The term ‘blog’ is just a huge PR ruse.

You can safely presume this disease of ‘Blogspokepersons’ (Valleywag’s invention) will spread out from the comfy environs of Silicon Valley and New Tork to other parts of the world, which is a sure thing since the patients blatantly deny they suffer from any such ailment.

So, dear Virginia, there is no such thing as News 2.0, there is only money.

In the words of Dave Winer,

... it's a f***** up little industry and everyone needs to clean house. There are some pockets of brightness, and we need to help those shine, and we also need to shine the light on the dirty practices that pay your bills, but hurt everyone else.

Labels: Blog networks, blogging. ethics

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:17 PM