John Dvorak, PC Magazine's high-octane columnist, writes:
Blogs, or Web logs, are all the rage in some quarters. We're told that blogs will evolve into a unique source of information and are sure to become the future of journalism. Well, hardly. Two things are happening to prevent such a future: The first is wholesale abandonment of blog sites, and the second is the casual co-opting of the blog universe by Big Media.
Dan Gillmor, who would be the opposite of Dvorak when it comes to octane, wanted to respond but instead let his brother jump in.
Here's what Steve Gillmor had to say:
The dirty little secret Mr. Dvorak is ignoring is that blogs (and more profoundly, RSS) have changed the dynamics of professional journalism, not by replacing it, but informing it with the authentic voices of the creators of the technology while it's being created. This can be uncomfortable for the embedded media — witness John Markoff's reluctance to handicap blogging's survival long-term in a recent story for the New York Times.
Me? I'm with Markoff, reluctant to handicap but when asked if he has a blog replies “'Oh, I already have a blog, it's www.nytimes.com. Don't you read it?”