Sunday, September 13, 2009

Rise of the Professional Blogger & increasingly mythical - pajama-wearing classes.

The Rise of the Professional Blogger
by Benjamin Carlson
The Atlantic
September 11, 2009
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909u/professional-bloggers

[excerpt]

In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books,
Michael Massing articulates a point made so often about
the Web that it's nearly catechismal. Blogs, he says,
have torn down the power structure of old media.
"Decentralization and democratization" are the law of
the land, offering "a podium to Americans of all ages
and backgrounds to contribute." This is a notion that
bloggers and web gurus have been touting for years. In
his 2006 book, An Army of Davids, for example,
"Instapundit" blogger Glenn Reynolds argued that
"markets and technology" empowered "ordinary people to
beat big media." And this June, internet sage Clay
Shirky assured an audience at a TED event that the old
model, where "professionals broadcast messages to
amateurs," is "slipping away."

But is this really true? Among some of the biggest
bloggers, this notion is increasingly seen as suspect.
In early July, Laura McKenna, a widely respected and
longtime blogger, argued on her site, 11D, that blogging
has perceptibly changed over the six years she's been at
it. Many of blogging's heavy hitters, she observed, have
ended up "absorbed into some other professional
enterprise." Meanwhile, newer or lesser-known bloggers
aren't getting the kind of links and attention they used
to, which means that "good stuff" is no longer "bubbling
to the top." Her post prompted a couple of the medium's
most legendary, best-established hands to react: Matthew
Yglesias (formerly of The Atlantic, now of
ThinkProgress), confirmed that blogging has indeed
become "institutionalized," and Ezra Klein (formerly of
The American Prospect, now of The Washington Post)
concurred, "The place has professionalized." Almost
everyone weighing in agreed that blogging has become
more corporate, more ossified, and increasingly
indistinguishable from the mainstream media. Even Glenn
Reynolds had a slight change of heart, admitting in a
June interview that the David-and-Goliath dynamic is
eroding as blogs have become "more big-media-ish." All
this has led Matthew Hindman, author of The Myth of
Digital Democracy, to declare that "The era when
political comment on the Web is dominated by solo
bloggers writing for free is gone."

[...]

Blogging, then, seems to be an industry on the cusp of
maturity. Nick Carr compares its evolution to that of
ham radio in the early twentieth century. Out of the
amateur hubbub emerged self-made stars, who were then
hired by fledgling networks that eventually grew into
CBS, NBC and ABC. In much the same way, blogging
celebrities have been snatched up by old and new
conglomerates, while a sudden heart attack in the old-
media world has put commercial blogging enterprises into
a startlingly advantageous position. To wit, in the
midst of a major downturn in advertising profits across
most media, revenue to Gawker's network of eight blogs
jumped 45% in the first half of this year.

Clearly, a new establishment is taking shape. It seems
ever more likely that the next media kingpins will come
from the proverbial - and increasingly mythical -
pajama-wearing classes.