Steven "Everything Bad is Good for You" Johnson has had it with fake controversy articles about blogging that attack straw-men like "blogs will displace mainstream media" or "blogs are all about cats and angst." He's put together an excellent list of five things that aren't controversial about blogs, and suggests that "if you're writing an article or a blog post about this issue, and your argument revolves around one or more of these points — and doesn't add anything else of substance — STOP WRITING."
1. Mainstream, top-down, professional journalism will continue to play a vital role in covering news events, and in shaping our interpretation of those events, as it should.
2. Bloggers will grow increasingly adept at covering certain kinds of news events, but not all. They will play an increasingly important role in the interpretation of all kinds of news.
3. The majority of bloggers won't be concerned with traditional news at all.
4. Professional, edited journalism will have a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than blogging; examples of sloppy, offensive, factually incorrect, or tedious writing will be abundant in the blogosphere. But diamonds in that rough will be abundant as well.
5. Blogs — like all modes of contemporary media — are not historically unique; they draw upon and resemble a number of past traditions and forms, depending on their focus.
(via Kottke)
