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February 8, 2005

More on Blog, the book

I meant to write this last night, but you know, life keeps infringing on my blog time.

I did not care very much for "Blog". For one, it is way too simplistic and preachy. Hugh Hewitt pushes blogging like a preacher does Heaven. Hugh compares blogging to the Protestant Reformation - and spends way too many pages trying to demonstrate this. The Catholic Church = MSM and blogs = Luther. That just doesn't work for me, but I suspect that Minnesotan Lutherans will love it.

Hugh's history of Internet communication is several years off, too. Hewitt seems to think that blogs started political discussion between non-media people on the Internet. He is flat out wrong there. I was discussing politics on Prodigy in 1992 on the Rush Limbaugh discussion board - there were a lot of lefties and righties arguing pretty strenuously about the politics of the day. The discussions were often meaner than Kos ever gets.

I am annoyed with his push to get CEOs into blog writing. That will probably kill the blog as a means of communication as it all becomes just one big advertisement. And many of us will quit reading them, just as we have quit watching TV because of all the commercials - we'll go on to something better.

I was disappointed with the book. I expected more from Hewitt. He is obviously just an opportunistic author putting out a book as quickly as possible while the word, Blog, is big - so he can get big sales. Hey, it's a free country (thank God!), so more power to him. I think a little more thought and research into the facts and a lot less emphasis on religion may have made this a better, more useful book.

Posted by Beth at February 8, 2005 6:34 AM

Comments

I was arguing politics with a mostly liberal, but quite civil, group of people on a local BBS (running on a Kaypro CP/M machine) back around '86. I have no doubt that those who had Internet access by that time were debating politics via Usenet and Listservs. Blogging has opened things up and changed the dynamic, but it is no break with the past.

Posted by: triticale at February 8, 2005 7:08 AM

Besides - that's where ya met me, too! (SWWBO, not triticale!)

Posted by: John of Argghhh! at February 8, 2005 11:04 AM

Getting CEOs into blog writing can't kill the blog as a means of communication unless everybody else stops writing their own blogs. The existance of any one blog has no real effect on any other blog, aside perhaps from the occasional Instalanche. The good ones will survive and attract readers, the poor ones will die, and the corporate advertisement blogs will be viciously mocked.

Blogs are just too independent for any committee-written corporate blog to kill. It's not like TV - ads are easier to ignore, and everyone can do it, not just the elite who happen to own the station or network.

Posted by: Roger Ritter at February 8, 2005 2:13 PM

Just to be sure we are all on the same blog here - exactly how many CEO's can write worth a darn anyway? It's a not to worry, much will be blurry.

Posted by: Robin Sedig-Johnson at February 9, 2005 8:53 AM

Roger, I hope you are correct.
Robin - you are absolutely correct. I know of CEOs who have trouble with emails - a blog could be disastrous for those companies!

Posted by: Beth Donovan at February 9, 2005 8:59 AM

Posted by: pharmacy at June 23, 2005 9:52 PM