Bogged down and bugged by blog hype

I have had enough of Weblog hype.

Maybe you wouldn't expect to read that here, in a venue that could at least loosely be described as a Weblog. But let's be clear: I do not pretend that this site is (a) an alternative form of grassroots journalism; (b) always up-to-the-minute; (c) a precise monitor of the pulse of news and information, Internet or otherwise; (d) particularly interesting to people outside my circle of family, friends and colleagues in the design professions; or (e) anything but an ego-fed, self-promotional brochure with occasional personal quips and rants such as this one.

Some "blog" authors, and at least as many journalism pundits who track Weblogs, pretend or at least hope that this craft of assembling Web links with commentaries and message boards is a news medium in and of itself.

Sorry, friends, but no.

At its best, the Weblog craft nets useful and informative sites. Ric Ford's MacInTouch, which is heavy on practical, news-tip links for Apple aficionados and much lighter on commentary, exemplifies the best of "blogging." Here's one site where any Mac user can plug into just about every Apple-related announcement, software review, patch or upgrade. Ford is occasionally first with a major news item, but more often the site's promise is that you won't wait long to read about it in MacInTouch no matter who had it first.

But MacInTouch long predated all the Weblog hype. I doubt Ford even realized he was blogging when he started the site in oh, 1994 or so. Certainly the word hadn't been coined.

Today we have entire software suites (think Blogger) backed by companies (think Blogger again) devoted to propagating the Weblog craft. I still bristle when I see broad content management suites, such as PostNuke and its ancestor, PHP-Nuke, listed in open-source directories as "blog tools." I could run just about any kind of Web site I wanted from a Nuke platform, from news to portal to e-commerce.

And now, mainstream "offline" journalists fire up their own Weblogs right along with authors who have thrived in the Internet culture for years. "Understanding the expansive reach and independent voice of blogs, several leading journalists and news organizations launched them as supplements to traditional reports," writes Dale Peskin, head of New Directions for News, in the API NewsFuture letter.

Steve Outing, another of the news industry's online-focused commentators, repeatedly and adamantly focuses attention on blogs about, well, blogs in recent editions of Poynter.org's E-Media Tidbits, itself a group Weblog.

So with all the blogs about blogs linked to and from other blogs, who is doing the original newsgathering and reporting around here? And who is aggregating intelligent packages of contemporary news and information for mass audiences or even large niches of everyday consumers? I say it isn't the bloggers, whose interests are personal and focal planes are narrow. Here's how I read what Peskin wrote: Once they saw an opening for expressing independent opinion, journalists launched their own blogs as workarounds to the newsgathering and vetting processes of their mainstream media bosses.

Fine. But call it what it is: an attempt to capture shares of the opinion leadership market. The formula is no different from what passes for cable news programming, or talk radio, these days:

1. Here's the top line of a news item.
2. Here's what I think about it.
3. Here's what others think about it.
4. Call in and tell us what you think about it.
5. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Deep down, I think all those studies of credibility in mainstream journalism miss an important point: People distrust big news media not because they're not unbiased enough, but because they're not biased enough. If you're a conservative, you love to distrust The New York Times and the "liberal East Coast media establishment." If you're a liberal, you think The Wall Street Journal is a reactionary mouthpiece for corporate excess. Journalists at both publications will tell you they revere the notions of truth, fairness and unbiased, balanced reporting more than just about anything else in their craft. The bias and distrust come as much from consumers looking in as big media looking out.

Enter the opinion leaders -- commentators who have found media venues and substantial audience segments across the political spectrum. Opinion leaders know they don't have to have a heterogeneous mass audience to get ahead. They simply need enough audience saturation within the range of their opinions to build what seems to be a relentlessly loyal fan base.

James Taranto's OpinionJournal Best of the Web Today is to the Web what Bill O'Reilly's show is to cable and Rush Limbaugh's program is to radio: personality-driven commentary couched in carefully selected news items. I'm not making a qualitative statement here, nor am I just picking on conservative political commentators (I bet all three men would argue that's not how they think of themselves). All of these are sometimes informative, sometimes entertaining venues. I'm simply saying these guys are commentators by routine, reporters only rarely.

The problem with that model, whether in broadcast or online, is that someone still has to gather, verify and report the news items. Mainstream and subject-matter journalists still do that. Bloggers don't, with excruciatingly rare exception. Just as few bloggers operate truly engaging systems for community reaction and commentary underneath their own quips. The formula for blog message boards is more like this:

Start with 1. through 3. above.

4. Here's what I think about what you just said.
5. Me, too.
6. No, not me.
7. Not me, either.
8. I expressed my opinion about this on my own blog, at www.[insert blog name here].com.
9. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So if you want to put up a site where you follow these formulas, hey, Web space is cheap and plentiful. You might even say something useful or important once in a while. Just don't build another verbose blog full of me-too links and unedited, offhand remarks, then expect it to be the next Time Magazine.

This is the next wave of journalism? Deliver me, please!