Since I have, ahem,other obligations this weekend, I will not attending Dave Winer's BloggerCon, virtually or in person. But I do have one point of conversation to throw into the mix as the blogarati gather at Hahvahd to think big thoughts:
Is blogging now reinventing the gateway system for stories that print invented and television tuned mercilessly?
I think it is. Ask anyone who's been Slashdotted, Instapundited, orDave'd. Or anyone that hasn't. Ask them about their hitrates, their readership. And compare the haves with the have nots.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The difference, of course, is that the new boss is not concerned with balance, or at least the perception of balance. The new boss is all about the new boss. Blogging, is , at some level, the greatest ego-satisfaction engine created by modern technology; where else can someone gain a worldwide audience for his or her rants overnight?
People's eyeballs are lazy; they tend to follow the same pattern as they travel across the web. Eventually, they self-select a gatekeeper blog that matches their interests;they follow Dave, so they go to Scripting News, and they follow his links. Right-wingers (and Democrats who want to troll) go to Glenn's sight to get their desired fix of (a)self-righteousness or (b)vitriol (pick one and only one per visit). Group blogs like Slashdot and MetaFilter are natural gateways because they aggregate so much content, it's a lazy browser's smorgasbord.
So what's the obligation of these gateway bloggers? Do they have the same responsibility as many claim the media does–to be balanced in coverage, if not through their content, then through their linking? How responsible are they for the quality of the content of what they link to?
The government says they're liable in some ways…Sherman Austin got sent to prison for linking to a site with the “Anarchist Cookbook” on it thanks to the PATRIOT Act. But beyond that, are bloggers subject to libel charges for what they link to? Do star bloggers have an obligation to their readers to fact-check their links?
I sense that they would say, “Hell, no!” But what's the dividing line between being a guy posting his rants online, and being an information gateway with responsibilities? I suspect that the most obvious one is the moment you start getting paid for it.
Sean M. Gallagher 