Cool cool blogs

I was sitting in a cultural studies tutorial not too long ago and the topic of blogs came up. I was really excited and looking forward to a great discussion because I've been on the internet since forever (I'm a bit of a dinosaur - I've had my hotmail account for at least 11 years) and I've managed to do a number of things, including moderating Michael Moore's message board before he shut it down. (A team of eight moderators could not stem the tide of death threats and other utterances.) In any case, I'm sitting in class prepared to discuss the wonders (and evils) of the net when the TA (who shall remain nameless and blameless) announced that blogs are silly, lame and naive and basically an exercise in navel-gazing. My mouth fell open.

I raised my hand and started explaining the Jeff Gannon phenomenon. I was, and still am, in possession of only a rudimentary knowledge of the whole debacle as it took a lot of people a lot of time to uncover the story. It involves the uncovering of Valerie Plame as a spy, and hints and speculation all revolved around the White House administration, namely Karl Rove. Plame's husband Joe Wilson had written an article for the New York Times that stated there was no evidence of WMD's in Iraq. Not long after that, Plame was outed by another journalist named Robert Novak. People make a lot of noise, and demand to know how the information got out.

At a press briefing, Jeff Gannon shows up and basically says that Plame is a household name, as if spies are commonly discussed at every dinner table. Bloggers at Daily Kos and World O'Crap got really curious because nobody knew who the guy was. I mean, really curious. As a collective, they looked into him, find out that he went to "journalism school" for two whole days and has never really had a real job before, yet managed to get a press pass every day from the White House. Over time they reveal that he had been a male escort, amongst other things. I remember reading about this at the time, being riveted, and the MAINSTREAM PRESS had absolutely nothing to say about it. Zip. Zilch. De nada.

This article explains how the blogosphere really does act as a public sphere, engaging the public in developing the news, rather than relying on a one way system. It brings McLuhan's Hot and Cool medium theory to mind. The mainstream press is hot and blogs are cool. Or at least cooler.

So I failed to impress the TA and ... well, who cares? I still think the blogosphere is underestimated in its ability to inform. For those of us who are tired of reading about what Britney ate for breakfast or what orphan Brangelina is adopting next, blogs are an excellent alternative.