Are Bloggers the Professional Wrestlers of Journalism?

It started as a Democratic “thing”. First Al Gore invented the internet. Then Howard Dean was among the first to blaze a political trail onto the landscape of the World Wide Web, both for fundraising and for political activism. With the 2006 midterm elections less than 6 months away the air is filling with the smoke from burning high octane rumors, accusations, and innuendo. The political blogging season is upon us, gentlemen start you engines!

But is anything of substance really being added by blogs or are they just raising our political pain threshold? In 2004 nobody took the time to care or to ask, it was just a question of jumping in the pool and keep treading water. Then the election results came in and the bloggers who were sure they were making a difference and could take out "the man" in the White House woke up to a nightmare. None of it apparently had mattered.

Shortly afterwards came the backbiting and the awkward dance between the blogs and the mainstream media (MSM) trying to figure out what was what anymore. Each wanted what the other had.

Though they play the outsider role well and enjoy the residual glow of being a more technically innovative product, bloggers want what the MSM already has: respectability, a larger audience, book deals, Pulitzer prizes, and company benefits. So Ana Marie Cox, the original "Wonkette" leaves the blog for a book deal and a gig at stodgy old MSM Time magazine. The book is ranked #91,856 on Amazon (3 stars) and I have no idea in the grand scheme of book publishing if thats a stud or a dud but she's back to blogging again.

On the other side, the MSM reporters hated having to follow all of those journalism rules and editorial guidelines. The appeal of the freewheeling world off blogging where its just a question of finding enough secondhand sources (flawed or not) to support an opinion and then get to the gate with the accusation first and hit "publish post" - now that's FUN! Now almost every MSM source and even relatively obscure pseudo "news" cable outlets have one of their traditional reporters trying their hand at blogging.

But should blogs focused on current events and politics do more than entertain? Is bitching enough? Initially it holds an appeal for new readers because the writing style and the Attention Deficit Disorder method of presenting information is, well, easier to take in. It doesn't take long; however, for new readers to begin asking, "Is this all there is?"

Every blog has to make a choice where to perch its banner on the infom vs. entertain spectrum of choices. Like MSM has seen for decades, whether its newspapers, magazines or television, those that do what they do well and find an audience stay, those that don't disappear. Except "disappear" is such an old-media way of looking at things, although blogs can be pretty ephemeral, in small nooks and crannies of the internet they still live on - over 39 million of them and over 2 billion links.