Seeing the Big Picture or Why Blogs Don't Suck
I've always been good at seeing both sides of a story, but there are days when I just can't understand the point of view of some people in this state. It's not stupidity -- although you couldn't tell the difference -- but it is a persistent inability to think that Indiana could be anything more than the insular little island they see. Yesterday, I was disheartened by John King's column in Intake on how much blogs suck. Was this guy on a deadline? Did he spend 20 minutes doing actual research? Did he just find a couple of links and surf around? He seems to have checked out this blog thing in an informal way and found nothing but crap. He couldn't understand that maybe there was something more to this phenomenon considering how many seemingly intelligent people use or have blogs, or that maybe he was missing a piece of information to help him make a competent decision. Maybe he just doesn't get it or he was trying to be funny. Either way, it was a lot easier for King to overgeneralize and say blogs suck -- and therefore -- bloggers are worthless, too (except, apparently for music bloggers. They appear to be "pretentious assbags.")While one guy's opinion in an Indy Star driven advertising vehicle aimed at 20-somethings doesn't really amount to a hill of beans in this world, what many in the mainstream media have overlooked is the amount of detailed reporting going on in blogs reaching an entire audience they're missing. Case in point: the trial balloon launched this week about intelligent design legislation paired with three poor economic and academic reports for Indiana. Many bloggers caught what the big news outlets missed, a very clear picture demonstrating a devastating cause and effect. Extremists in our legislature will continue to scare away young people, professionals, and corporate dollars. When will people notice that there is a direct correlation between ridiculous proposals like limiting reproductive rights or teaching intelligent design in schools and that fact that we can't get companies to expand, relocate and/or bring families here?
In the meantime, here are some great articles on the topic by just a few Indiana bloggers who saw the big picture this week, did some excellent writing, and who, coincidently, don't suck.
Indy Scribe -- An Indianapolis Star Quiz for You
TorporIndy -- Mitch Daniels--We Could Do Worse
Masson's Blog -- Journal Gazette Editorial on Intelligent Design in Science Classes (with an assist by the Indiana Law Blog)
Sneer.org -- Pass Me Some Intelligent Design While You're Up
posted by braingirl @ 11:42 AM
2 Comments:
I was astonished by it, too, considering that last year Intake did a huge glossy piece on local blogs and their impact, and they interviewed us at IndyScribe and everything.
But Intake is nothing if not uneven and a bit strange in it's coverage, so I guess that's par for the course.
I think you're right on the deadline theory.
Intake is quite inconsistant in its views. I think James Burnes just writes the first thing that comes to his head each week. His opinions are all over the map.
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