Blog Blogging Backlash -- Two weeks ago Josh Claybourn mentioned he didn’t like “blogging about blogging” and found it "incestuous and self-serving." This week John Rabe weighed in by asking, “You know what I'm getting a bit sick of? Tedious blog posts about blogging."

Everywhere I turn on the Internet, more and more blogs are filled with more and more angst-filled posts about how blogging relates to the rest of some blogger's daily life, whether or not they should continue, the existential import of all of it, blogging goals for the future, why someone is not going to be able to post anything for the next 4 1/2 hours, who's ranked where in the blog "ecosystem," and the future posts someone is planning deep within the recesses of his/her mind for which we are presumably to wait by the computer with anxious anticipation until this veritable cybergold flows from brain to keyboard to internet ether.

Josh and John both make good points. Blogging is incestuous, self-serving, and, more often than not, tedious. So why do people blog about blogging? Because whether we are a man or woman, Senior citizen or teen, believer or atheist, Republican or Democrat, beer drinker or wine sipper, all of us bloggers have one interest that we share in common: we love blogging.

Ghetto Walls -- In "Rebuilding the Dividing Walls?", Dr. Michael Russell wonders if Christians aren't using their blogrolls to produce unnecessary divisions within Godblogs. He makes some great points. As important as it is for us to build a sense of common community, it should be for the purpose of expanding our networks and broadening our perspective rather than returning to our own little "holy huddles."

Full Disclosure -- Following the example of Brian J. Noggle, I will disclose that I am on retainer by the Federal government. Twice a month I receive a small stipend for my consulting on various military matters. Although accepting this money does not require me to support the Bush Adminstration or its war on terror, it does require me to fight in it. Accepting this money, however, has not influenced my writing or the opinions I express on this blog.

The situation, however, will soon be changing. My contract will expire in a month and I have chosen not to renew the obligation. Contrary to the rumors, though, this change of career has nothing to do with a falling out between me and Karl Rove. Mr. Rove and I are still on good terms and we continue to enjoy our long standing tradition of meeting once a month to have ice cream and visit the kittens at the animal shelter.

(HT: Instapundit)

Shafer doesn't get it -- Actually, I think when it comes to blogs, Slate's media critic Jack Shafer does get it (almost) right. But he offered to send a dollar to the first person who wrote that line and since I can be bought (rather cheaply) I thought I'd take a shot at claiming the reward. After all, once you start getting paid you’re no longer an amateur, you move up to the rank of “professional.” And that is the point that the MSM media often misses. Most bloggers aren’t out to topple the media – we want to become the media.

But as Shafer correctly points out, “New media technologies almost never replace old media technologies, they merely force old technologies to adapt and find new ways to connect with their audiences.” I think he's correct and agree that bloggers who think that this medium will replace the mainstream media are misguided. I think, however, that most bloggers have a different objective. As Shafer point out,

In language only slightly less fervent than Shamberg's, conference participants declared blogs the destroyers of mainstream media. …Others prescribed blogs as the medicine the newspaper industry should take to reclaim its lost readers: Publishers should support reader blogs and encourage their reporters to blog in addition to writing stories. Podcasts would undermine the radio network empires. "Open source" journalism, in which readers and bloggers help set the news agenda for newspapers, was promoted as a tonic for what ails the press. Reporters were encouraged to regain the lost trust of readers by blogging drafts of their stories, their notes, and even their taped interviews so other bloggers could dissect and analyze them for fairness.

Bloggers don’t want to replace the media. We only want to be included in the process. For many in the MSM this may seem like a radical idea. But just as computer savvy Gen X-ers brought their familiarity and skills with personal technology with them when they entered academia, business, the military, and government, future generations of journalists and other media types will have grown up in a world of participatory journalism. The new New Journalism will not just be a change in the style of reporting; it will be a change in who is doing the reporting.

Vast Theo Wing Conspiracy -- Marla Swoffer thinks that the Godbloggers are up to something.