In-Betweeners

Doc likes the way someone is finally getting the Blogs V. Big J Journalism paradigm right. It's not about one versus the other, it's about Blogs AND Big J Journalism as Scott Rosenberg's piece on blogs in Salon reasonably suggest. Thanks for the pointer. There's something insightful in the end of Scott's piece that I find even more important. Check this out:

But blogs can do some things the pros can't. For better and worse, they air hunches and
speculations without the filter of an editorial bureaucracy (or the legal vulnerabilities of a
corporate parent). They trade links and argue nuances, fling insults and shower acclaim. The
editorial process of the blogs takes place between and among bloggers, in public, in real time,
with fully annotated cross-links. This carries pluses and minuses: At worst, it creates a lot of
excess verbiage that only the most fanatically interested reader would want to wade through.
At best, it creates a dramatic and dynamic exchange of information and ideas.

I think the most significant issue is how bloggers PLAY together. What goes on in between blogs is one of the most unique aspects of this art form. We play, we visit, we tease, we hang out our laundry for the neighbors to see and they call back, "hey, who wears the bright red long johns?"

Scott gets the "in between" part of the medium, which is about much more than news or opinion. It's about community. It's about a ground swell of people saying we matter. If there's anything to say about the Blog v. Big J Journalism battle it's about the underlying assumptions of each. Bloggers are reminding Big J Journalism that people matter, we're powerful and we've been ignored, or worse, labelled "consumers" and allowed to subsist on a meager soup of watery editorial content while being force-fed advertising and advertorial slops.