Cobb

The Blogosphere is set to become a more deliberative medium. The right advances in the toolset will objectify all these deliberations. Then, the true power of the blogosphere will become evident. It won't be the blogosphere - it will be something else. This is the beginning of a real revolution.

Tru dat!

A contrarian hypothesis:

The only (and I mean ONLY) substantive difference between the blogosphere and the MSM is the cost of entry.

MSM capital and human resource costs are huge; market granularity is low to medium; performance risk is high; potential return on investment is unpredictable.

Blogosphere capital and human resource costs are next to nothing; market granularity is extremely high; performance risk is low; potential return on investment is also unpredictable.

MSM will always be risk-averse because they need to protect their capital investment. Blogs will force them to find ways to either protect or pull capital out of their businesses.

BUT. The most important aspects of the blogosphere are:

1) that the quality of information is very high
2) the interactivity of the medium allows for multiple perspectives
3) most of the content is persistent

So long as these three qualities exist, the blogosphere makes for a superior forum for deliberation. What I think most thoughtful people are struck by is how superior the blogosphere is in the deliberative mode.

On television and somewhat less so in the newspapers, you find certain topics beaten to death, but only in one direction. Most controversies will many pro and con arguments but the mainstream press almost never carries more than two or three. A perfect example would be the Plame case. Without the blogosphere, there would be no way whatsoever to get beyond the political spin which also leaked into the way the mainstream media reported it.

Even in documentaries like Frontline, the best we have, you will get no more than 10 aspects of a problem discussed. The blogosphere reveals a great deal more subtlety and nuance as well as detail. The conflicts of interest are easier to see, and the perspectives of the individuals and groups involved in telling the story are clear. Instead of every television station using a false objectivity and 'disinterested' voice, you have dozens of partisan voices of varying qualities giving details and abstracts.

I like your analysis and I agree, but the substance of the content of the blogosphere makes it operated in a superior fashion for the purposes of deliberation.

Yeah, point taken, sort of, maybe. :)

Did you know, way back when, before television, newspaper journalists were worried about newsreels! A newsreel camraman would set up his Auricon camera and start filming a press conference, and then the print guys would start clicking those toy clicker things to try to ruin the sound track.

Then television journalism, in the age of Edward R. Murrow, came along. Newspapers expressed fear, bravado, or dismissiveness about what either was or wasn't their competition. And it put the afternoon newspaper on shaky ground for breaking news.

Then, CNN changed everything -- again. Cable news demolished the whole concept of the news cycle, and gave the afternoon newspaper its coup de grace. If a paper is put to bed at 10:00 a.m., any news that broke after then gave cable and broadcast an automatic scoop, so why bother?

Are blogs a threat? Yes, but in one specific area: Opinion leadership. If "people don't read newspapers, they slip into them like a warm bath," as St. McLuhan once observed, then opinion columnists are the rubber duckies and toy boats. They're there, they're familiar, you may like them or not, but they're part of the bath experience.

By contrast, the Internet is a shower with a fire hose, and the blogosphere is Toys 'r' Us. With really good, deep, and insightful commentary served up constantly all day as news breaks, newspapers can't compete. Another piece of their franchise slips away.

When I get off the PATH subway in the morning, there are a couple of guys handing out free newspapers -- A.M. New York, and Metro. Fresh news, something to read while you're on public transportation. And neither one has an editorial page staff or has a "position" on any of the issues of the day. They just report. This is the future of the newspaper biz. Read it and weep.

(Shameless plug: Check out my weblog TOC site, punditdrome.com, which features COBB on two pages!)

After what CBS (Rather) and CNN (Jordan) encountered in the last six months, what do you think the networks' defensive strategy will evolve to?

Will they start their own counterattack on bloggers?

Will they actually begin to weed out the more egregious lefties?

Or will they keep stonewalling? Do they recognize the trouble they're in?

Well, I think the bloggerati want the network news icons to go with a bang. But it looks like they'll leave with a whimper.

The so-called major networks will continue to scale back their operations, as they have for the past decade. The video-delivered news market ("broadcast" doesn't really fit anymore) will continue to flatten. And, there won't be any more TV anchor stars.