Is blogging going out with a whimper?

The mainstream media is feverishly predicting the Demise Of Blogging As We Know It^tm:

You're forgiven if you cling to the conventional wisdom that blogging, like half-pipe snowboarding, enjoys an unrelievedly rich future. Forgiven, but maybe behind the curve. A new report from Gallup pollsters, "Blog Readership Bogged Down," cautions that "the growth in the number of U.S. blog readers was somewhere between nil and negative in the past year."

Color me unconcerned about this particular aspect of the future. The reason why blogging became so popular in the first place is that it represents an easy way to get published online. In some form, it has been around as long as there have been people using the Worldwide Web as a way to publish their ideas and commentary. All that the new stuff does is make it much easier to create a technically-sound, semi-attractive website for hosting one's writings, videos or audio commentary.

If blogging is falling apart today, which I don't believe, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt, there's a very simple and logical explanation for that that should immediately jump out. It's hard to write anything that others want to read. The majority of blogs are about people, not ideas, new things, art, etc. They have no redeeming value of any kind to anyone except the owner and the people in their lives. I'm not one to judge the value of such blogs, but realistically these have no future and if they dominate the blogosphere, then clearly that is going to skew the statistics dramatically.

As much as both sides hate to admit it, both the bloggers and the mainstream media need one another. Despite their best efforts to deny it, no one save for ideological leftists genuinely believes that the mainstream media is objective, or often even highly professional these days. The mainstream media is increasingly struggling with problems such as reporters who just blatantly make up "facts," make up quotes and then attribute them to those they interview and even outright disregard the input from technical advisors whose input would eliminate juicy, ad revenue-generating controversy from a particular subject.

Bloggers are putting increasing pressure on the media to differentiate itself through professionalism, indepth coverage and, well, everything that it was supposed to be doing all along. That doesn't mean that most journalists are actually doing this as of right now, but the blogosphere puts valuable pressure there where it needs to be, and is the only thing that mightcause a revitalization of the mainstream media. I'm not counting on it, but that doesn't mean that the media doesn't desperately need the raking-over-the-coals it gets from bloggers. Bloggers, in turn, get a significant amount of the information that we comment on through the mainstream media. Without the mainstream media, the blogosphere would be rather... bland and asinine for the most part.

The mainstream media should not welcome the death of the blogosphere anymore than Microsoft should welcome the death of Apple. It takes the underdog gnawing on the ankles of the big dog with a ferocious temper sometimes to get the big dog to stay young and relevent. Granted, as I said, in the case of the mainstream media it might be so apathetic and lethargic at this point that the underdog will nip the femoral artery and put the old bitch out of her misery once and for all.

For more check out this post by Ed Driscoll.