Mike Murray essay -- Blog On

28 August 2008

Blog On

--by Mike Murray

The advice by members of the mainstream media (print, broadcast, and cable) to those thinking of starting a blog is always the same: “Don’t! There are too many already!” To hear them tell it, few are interested in learning what anyone but they have to say. They point to their large numbers of viewers, listeners, and subscribers.

But for many traditional media outlets – print, especially – the bottom is slowly falling out. Even large, metropolitan newspapers (whose sales run into the hundreds of thousands per day), owe much of their success to the popularity of Comics and Sports sections. Take those two fan favorites out, and circulations would plummet. Editors know that the surest way to incur readers’ wrath is to mess with the “funny papers.” That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of modern journalism.

Were it not for Spider-Man, Beetle Bailey, and Charlie Brown – and the reporting that attends the exploits of local sports teams – the reach of most newspapers would be limited. Columnists: Even if the publication for which you write still enjoys a relatively large distribution, the subset of the overall audience that patronizes your work is considerably smaller. So rather than dismiss bloggers as inconsequential upstarts, you would do well to keep an eye on the rearview mirror.

Ditto broadcast and cable “personalities.” So many television show hosts and news presenters are today dependent upon their natural beauty for employment. (Well, that and an hour or so in the makeup chair.) But twinkies who get hired because of their looks will one day be shoved aside for the same reason. When age takes its inevitable toll, they will be replaced by younger, prettier models.

Blogging represents a welcome – an absolutely essential – alternative to the myriad forms of commercial communication. It offers anyone with a computer and an Internet connection the opportunity to be heard. And it is more important than ever that common folks be heard. Too many of the people who comprise the professional press have abused the privilege of “speech.” They have squandered public trust. These days, they seldom inform; instead, they attempt to persuade. They take political sides.

Some among the audience are savvy enough to cut through the crap. But many are not. When opinion is interwoven with news by a reporter (or by an editor), it gains a credibility it does not deserve. The knock against blogging is that it is unvetted, that it is subjective. But at least consumers of that kind of content know that what they’re getting isn’t empirical.

Too many journalists erroneously claim to be objective. It has become the norm for them to deliberately blur the line between fact and fiction. Because that is so – because nearly all reporting today contains a measure of bias (and because so much of it flows from a single political ideology) – it is necessary that alternate points of view be made available. When slanted, one-sided reporting goes unchallenged, it impedes the proper functioning of a free society. For all its flaws, blogging offers an excellent opportunity for counterbalance.

My own emmeffem.com website is a modest example. Its traffic is puny, when compared to hugely successful sites such as the Drudge Report ®. My site doesn’t include links to dozens of other popular sites. It doesn’t make use of multi-media effects. It employs no graphics. And, other than the few photos of animals who are the subjects of selected essays, it doesn’t even include pictures.

Neither does it incorporate banner ads or annoying “pop-ups.” It doesn’t require visitors to accept “cookies,” or to lower their computers’ security settings. It doesn’t “data mine”; it doesn’t invade anyone’s privacy -- in any way.

What you get at my website are words. Plain and simple. I employ the twenty-six characters of the English alphabet, supplemented with a little punctuation. That’s it. No razzle, no dazzle. No shock video, no pulsating sound tracks, no slide shows. Just written commentary – mostly in the form of essays. Even my blog posts (in the Berea Bits section), are atypical in that they are infrequent. Most bloggers post fresh content daily – sometimes more often than that. Conversely, new material surfaces at my site only a few times per month.

Nevertheless, I am amazed by the loyalty and the diversity of my audience. Granted, not all who frequent my site are fans. Some, no doubt, visit to learn what “that idiot” is up to now. Still, they come.

They come from every corner of the United States – east, west, north, and south – and from every place in between. They come from rural farm districts and from big cities. They come from Europe, from Asia, from Africa, and from the Middle East. They come from North, Central, and South America. They come from the Arctic Circle.

They come from Russia, from Australia, and from Canada. They come from Argentina, from Switzerland, and from the Netherlands. They come from China, from Germany, and from India. They come from Egypt, from Bulgaria, and from Belgium. They come from Ireland, from Israel, and from Latvia. They come from Kenya, from Mexico, and from Dubai. They come from the Philippines, from Morocco, and from Italy. They come from France, from New Zealand, and from Japan.

They come from places too numerous to mention here. And they come every month. From scores of countries. From every continent on Earth (except Antarctica). And that’s not all.

They come from governments: local and state. They come from federal agencies. They come from foreign authorities. They come from branches of the U.S. military. They come from libraries. They come from for-profit corporations, and from not-for-profit charities. They come from think tanks, from law firms, and from hospitals.

They come from the media. They come from newspapers, from television and radio stations, and from cable outlets. They come from magazines, from e-zines, and from other blog sites.

They come from schools. (A lot of them come from schools.) They come from public and private schools. They come from primary and secondary schools. They come from institutions of higher learning. They come from two-year colleges, from four-year universities, and from graduate schools. They come from common places, and they come from prestigious places (Stanford, MIT, Notre Dame, Oberlin, Harvard, and Northwestern among them). And they come from prominent foreign institutions, too, such as England’s Eton.

Grade-school students facing assignment deadlines – and college aspirants sweating over application essays – are regularly “inspired,” it seems, by compositions of mine. Teachers and admissions officers: please go easy on those who’ve only gently borrowed or paraphrased. On the other hand, lower the boom on those who’ve pilfered wholesale. (Being lightly imitated is flattering. Being heavily plagiarized is not.)

Visitors to my website come from many places, including pioneering ISPs such as AOL and EarthLink, as well as from numerous cable and telephone company high-speed providers. Wherever they come from, they’re welcome.

My audience is nowhere near as large as some. But it is plenty big enough for me. It is comprised of the numerous people who visit my website directly, and the many others who receive my content indirectly, via forwarded e-mail messages. My audience is diverse and it is widespread. It fascinates me that my material is as likely to be read by someone in Norway as it is by one of my Berea neighbors. That’s the power of the Internet: the opportunity it affords regular folks to communicate with vast numbers of people – down the street, across the country, and around the globe.

That power belongs to each of us. When I contemplated creating my own web site, I considered the objections of members of the mainstream media (who fretted about the proliferation of the blogosphere). They nearly dissuaded me. I’m glad they didn’t. The world needs an increase in communication, not a decrease. There should be more voices involved in political and cultural conversations, not fewer.

Sure, participation by the masses dilutes the traditional press’ ability to “control the message.” But that’s a good thing. A very good thing. On the other hand, the competition for audience also reduces the ability of some media outlets to remain commercially viable. That’s an unfortunate thing – for employees caught in the downsizing squeeze. As painful as transitions to more egalitarian methods (of sharing information and ideas) are for some people to endure, however, it is essential that free societies undergo them.

Consequently, I will continue to make observations. And to post them online. And people the world over can continue to consider my comments. And to agree or disagree with them.

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