Algunos medios comienzan a entender lo que está pasando con los weblogs en Estados Unidos y aportan algo de sentido común al debate entre mainstream media (MSM) y bloggers. Imprescindible columna editorial de Peggy Noonan en Opinion Journal - From The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page: The Blogs Must Be Crazy. Or maybe the MSM is just suffering from freedom envy.
Para la autora, la crítica hacia los blogs va descaminada, lo medios tienen que entender su nuevo papel:
Blogging changes how business is done in American journalism. The MSM isn’t over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.
El poder de los weblogs no radica en la erupción de la opinión salvaje, sino en otros factores:
1. They use the tools of journalists and of the Internet to look for and find facts that have been overlooked, ignored or hidden.
2. Bloggers, unlike reporters at elite newspapers and magazines, are independent operators.
3. Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately. The items they post can be as long or short as they judge to be necessary.
4. Bloggers are also selling the smartest take on a story.
5. And they’re doing it free.
6. It is not true that there are no controls. It is not true that the blogosphere is the Wild West.
7. I don’t know if the blogosphere is rougher in the ferocity of its personal attacks than, say, Drew Pearson. Or the rough boys and girls of the great American editorial pages of the 1930s and ’40s.
Entre sus pronósticos, una visión romántica de la función de los bloggers:
Finally, someday in America the next big bad thing is going to happen, and lines are going to go down, and darkness is going to descend, and the instant communication we now enjoy is going to be compromised. People in one part of the country are going to wonder how people in another part are doing. Little by little lines are going to come up, and people are going to log on, and they’re going to get the best, most comprehensive, and ultimately, just because it’s there, most heartening information from . . . some lone blogger out there. And then another. They’re going to do some big work down the road.
A tomar nota.
