Blogs

Mainstream Media Does Story On Growing Influence Of Blogs, Blogs React By Chiding Mainstream Media

By Hillary Profita

May 5, 2006 / 1:00 PM EDT / CBS News

(CBS/AP)

Last night, the NBC "Nightly News" aired a story on the growing number and influence of blogs – you can watch it here. "What started as lonely voices from laptops are a growing influence in the mainstream media," correspondent Dawn Fratangelo said in the piece, "Most every news outlet — including our own — now has at least one."

In the world of media-watching (you're in it right now) this is not a novel piece of news. The subject has been hashed, and re-hashed, and then hashed some more. So, somewhat predictably, some bloggers have reacted to the story with nice helping of snark. Wrote Dreadpundit:

It was one of those newsbits that make you wonder in what decade the mainstream media are living. NBC ran a condescending little piece about blogs as if it were a discovery they had just made (maybe it was.) Now we're "real," we've been on the nightly news.
But in their montage of screenshots and happy patter (including a brief view of The Jawa Report's main [page] - another blog I write for) NBC anchor Brian Williams didn't mention the names of Dan Rather or Eason Jordan.

Glenn Reynolds, otherwise known as Instapundit, who was interviewed for the story, wasn't particularly impressed, but didn't exactly go for the jugular:

Well, I watched it, and I don't want to be rude to the NBC people, who were quite pleasant. But jeez, that was a 2002 story. If you hadn't heard of blogs before, I guess it was news. Otherwise, not so much. But I guess there's not a lot you can do within the confines of a roughly 2 minute news story.

But Reynolds later updated his post with a portion of an e-mail from reader Rick Lee, who argued the other side of the coin:

Well ... these stories are still needed. It seems that most of the people I come in contact with either have no idea what a blog is or they are only vaguely aware but don't read them. The word itself is very off-putting to most people. I can't tell you how many times I've talked about blogs with somebody who struggles to get the word out and then giggles after saying it... as though they had just said "poop" or something. Blogs are still far, far from mainstream in this country.

It's always nice to have someone reasonable interject. The reality in this little discussion is, of course, that when you step out of the bubble of media-watching, it's pretty obvious that the majority of the evening newscasts' audience probably aren't all that familiar with blogs – their nature, their breadth or their influence. I'm not arguing that the audience is clueless, but blogs, as Lee put it, are still "far, far from mainstream." And while growing numbers of viewers may be defecting from the evening newscasts in exchange for other outlets for news, the evening newscasts are still very, very much the mainstream. So, while to those actually within the new media bubble this story is way behind the curve, does that mean its value is entirely lost on the audience?