The circle widens: Hill attacks bloggers, saying Rush is better. Lileks responds, quoted by many including OTB. Rush responds to Lileks. Don Sensing now responds to Rush. A taste:
Not content to stop there, Rush careened along, offering sarcastic definitions of blogging and bloggers. Bloggers , he said, are “nerds” who “have a journalism degree” and wish they had the influence of major media, but instead email each other and pretend they are having an effect. That’s not precisely what he said, but it it pretty close, and it wasn’t the only thing derogatory he said about blogs or blogging.
But Rush, think this through. Only a few bloggers have journalism degrees: Jeff Jarvis and Bill Hobbs, for example. I have a diploma from the Defense Information School, whose journalism curriculum is accredited by the same outfit that accredits Notre Dame. But the vast majority of bloggers don’t have a J. degree.
Unlike you and radio, Rush, we are not making a living blogging, except maybe Andrew Sullivan. I have made a grand total of maybe $500 in donations, blogging since March 2002, and am darn grateful for every penny. Before you slash your razor tongue at us, consider that you are a mercenary, bloviating for money. We are what people used to praise world-class amateur athletes for doing: being in the game for the love of the game. We blog for the love of it and you commentate for money, yet you decide we are the ones who deserve scorn and ridicule. No wonder so many people think you’re a windbag. As Lileks says, your show “is three hours of shoveled coal” but your “scope is narrow.”
I have never considered blogs, my own or another’s, as a competitor to mass media like radio. People can listen to radio anywhere – in the car, at work, at home, on the beach. But for now, reading blogs chains you to specific locations. Perhaps news technology, better than WiFi, will break those chain, I dunno. But it doesn’t matter anyway. You are not my competitor, and I am not yours.
This is exactly right. Bloggers are an adjunct to the mass media, not a replacement.
