Can't get the link to work - perhaps it is "operator error."

Baron

"It's really depressing that The Daily Show is not just funnier that I am -- they are better at stating the more substantive point about bloggers."
Well,if it makes you feel any better I don't think their point is particularly well-phrased. They need to drop the first "complancecy"; it doesn't make much sense to say that complacency breeds complancecy.

More importantly I think your point and theirs is wrong. My guess is that barriers to entry are too low for the blogosphere as a whole to be co-opted. If the big blogs become too close to the establishment, a new group of blogs will rise in prominence. So long as there is a demand for fresh, "outsider" commentary, there will be an ample supply.

direct link to the video: link

So long as there is a demand for fresh, "outsider" commentary, there will be an ample supply.

Exactly! That's why there's a Fox channel. The three mainstream networks were showng the same thing, night after night, with the only difference being the face behind the voice. Fox came along and pushed the envelope.

If some blogs become co-opted by the MSM, they will act and sound like it and 'outsider' blogs will come up and replace them.

Sure, some blogs will be co-opted by the usual suspects, but never fear, there are millions of lonely people out there. There will always be outsiders to the main process.

Who knows, maybe in the future there will be all sorts of clever misanthropes railing about the MSM blogs and simul-web-mo-pod-blogging about some crap or other.

One can only hope.

What about us bloggers that are already complacent?

If some blogs become co-opted by the MSM, they will act and sound like it and 'outsider' blogs will come up and replace them.

Many left and right blogs appear to be just parts of the Parteiapparat. That doesn't mean that they are, they just act that way. Two extreme examples: DailyKos and BlogsForBush or Hugh Hewitt. Less extreme examples: Insty, Polipundit, ODub, etc.

There are outsiders, but the problem is that many outsiders (like moi) don't get hardly that much traffic and are rarely linked to by other bloggers. You've basically got two self-referential gangs.

Bloggers either simply repeat news or give
personal opinions. Nothing else. In fact,
that's all bloggers can do. Blogging is like
the old telephone party line, More gossip
than substance.

The main problem with blogging has been pointed
out by others. Until bloggers can be fired or
have other punishment placed on them they will:
1) Repeat news,
2) Mangle the info in the news,
3) Just giving a personal/biased opinion about
the news.

Blogging: "Too many indians, not enough chiefs."

But it does make for good entertainment.

Some bloggers do some actual reporting.

Like, americablog.org digging up receipts on the Gannon thing.

Or, indcjournal.com sending a preservation of electronic evidence letter to the Abilene Kinko's in the Rathergate case, or at least asking for the same thing. That was the day after I'd joked that it was a good thing that bloggers can't issue subpoenas. My laughter didn't last long.

And, of course, I've taken my camera out to a few news reports, like "peace" protests. You may have seen the picture of the swastika made out of the American flag on Sully. I took that picture, and Sully - yes, Sully - linked to it.

If you want to keep the big bloggers honest, I post daily threads where you can comment on what's happening on the big blogs, the LAT, NYT, etc. over at BigMediaBlog.com.

Dan, reading you suck up to The Daily Show is a perfect example of what you're talking about here.

“With legitimacy, the bloggers get a seat at the table, and with that comes access, status, money, and power -- and iif there's anything we've learned about the mainstream media, that breeds complacency.”

The new media are less likely to become complacent. The ability to be checked and balanced is never ending. Dan Rather was able to become an elitists and ignore his critics---but it is virtually impossible for Dan Drezner to do likewise. The very premise of the new media revolves around accountability. A blogger is getting their ass fact checked on a daily basis!

I suspect Dan and Henry are right on the mark here. The best analogy I can think of is the wild-west days of the web. There was a similar pattern: lots of cool, funky, non-corporate sites. At first, commercial sites couldn't make a lot of noise and weren't capable of taking the audience away, but that changed as they became more sophisticated. Network effects came in. Then, of course, blogs developed - in part -as ways of consolidating links to those sites that became impossible to find. But the cycle is already happening again: yes, there are tens of thousands of lonely people (or bored people, or whatever) who can make blogs, just as they can make webpages chronicling the effects of dropping objects down a dorm stairwell, but they're likely to recede into background noise. Indeed, blogs are the second iteration of a process of web pluralization followed by consolidation.

I wonder if the decline of usenet is also a useful model. After all, much of the lingo of blogs developed on usenet, but usenet is not exactly vibrant anymore.

Blog factchecking is likely to get more corrupt, too.

It's already the case that a lot of bloggers will consider a report to be thoroughly fisked by material that other bloggers completely discount.

The very term "fisking" is partisan. It started with right-wing or zionist bloggers who'd take a Robert Fisk eyewitness report and go over it line by line providing references to prove that Fisk couldn't have seen what he saw.

steven colbert had me cracking up. I love reading blogs, but I read them also as entertainment (not only for news). I get different perspectives, opinions, ideas from you guys. That's what I enjoy most. That, and the fact that there is a 'humnan' element to blogs. The news organizations are an unpenatrable organization that spews whatever it sees fit. Blogs are a different creature. Enjoy the run. Things change. the life of blogs, I feel, will too.