On “The Death of Blogging”

Recently, a number of articles and arguments have popped up claiming that blogging is dead. I have some sympathy for the complaint, insofar as many of the original blogs have either gone dormant or morphed into something more akin to “mainstream media” news sites with staff writers, ads and that whole corporate media thing going on. Is this "the death of blogging" or just the fact that many of the more popular blogs have ceased to be blogs and become news/opinion web sites. Is blogging a technology or a literary form? People called me a blogger before I actually had a proper "blog" set up. I had a news page on one of my sites that I updated frequently, but it was manually done, no database or blogging software. I eventually switched over to blog software for my news primarily because sending out e-mails got to be a real hassle and I grew weary of doing it.

Blogs began as personal journals on the Internet. They were different from newspapers and corporate media sites. That was their appeal. They were democratic and anyone could do one. Gone were the filters and gatekeepers of traditional print publishing. No longer does an editor have the final say on whether the world hears your thoughts or not. People could post their thoughts in the wild frontier of the blogosphere and no one could stop them. It was a revolution in creative freedom and it was free. What’s not to like? more