OJR:
And the meek shall inherit our bylines. Mark Glaser discusses weblogs and their connections to camera phones. He also mentions their potential watershed moment could be the possible military conflict with Iraq. (Calling it
Gulf War II may be cute, but it's not accurate and diminshes the gravity of the situation.) I disagree that this could be a big moment for weblogs. If everyone in Iraq was blogging when/if a war happens, then we'd see a watershed. Or if the US troops and policy-makers themselves were blogging.
I believe the real power of weblogs will be shown in their ability to relate firsthand accounts of participants in world events—as in the Venezuelan blog I pointed to on Sunday. It's the power of everyone being a witness and having a voice that will have the biggest impact. (Though a system of galvanizing attention is also very important...and Big Media has a handle on that right now.)
He takes a final jab at weblogs with his last line, "Welcome to the world of lowered expectations." I counter with, "Welcome to the world were intermediaries aren't enough."
Update: The Reuters Article (
Blogs May Pierce the Fogs of War) he mentions makes a better case of
how exactly weblogs may contribute during a war. But I think this article still describes bloggers as mini-journalists and misses the point about firsthand descriptions of events directly from participants.