A much-linked piece on CJR points out the mind-numbingly obvious about blogs: that they refer to one another. Intrepid analyst Zachary Roth details several cases of bloggers posting commentary about other bloggers' postings, and concludes:
Next: Kevin Drum responds to Matt Yglesias responding to Amy Sullivan responding to Air America. Then, the entire world explodes.
Blogs are conversations. Conversations involve people talking to each other, and responding to what each has to say. Self-referential it is, but surprising it ain't. What's CJR's next piece going to be, "Newspaper uses words to communicate statements of fact and opinion"?
First of all, does that gossip-monger over at Wonkette linking to the piece really constitute "much-linked?" I don't read those journo-scolds over at CJR often (And who would?), but it appears, in this case, Mr. Roth was joking about the self-referential nature of the blog-o-sphere.
Or perhaps you lack a sense of humor? In which case I doubt CJR is going write a piece about "Newspapers using words to communicate statements of fact and opinion."
Posted by: elissa at April 23, 2004 02:30 PMWhat's less obvious is that bloggers also (often) link to newspapers.
Posted by: Dylan Tweney at April 23, 2004 11:14 PMDylan, not only do bloggers often link to newspapers, but as Dan Gilmore pointed out at one of the Berkeley J-School sessions the other day, links are one of the strong characteristics of blogs which traditional news has not been able to do nearly as well: links back up what you say. Links expose your sources.
Posted by: Scot Hacker at May 2, 2004 02:57 AMScot wrote:
"links back up what you say. Links expose your sources."
I think I read about that one time -- do you have a source for that??
Posted by: chris at May 4, 2004 09:29 AM