Why Blogs Are Like Tulips

[donsu]

http://nationaljournal.com/powers.htm

By William Powers, National Journal

If the news media were a stock market, the blue chips would be tanking. The establishment names that everyone used to trust have crashed in credibility and prestige, and are now living through their own Great Depression. Top executives at bastions such as The New York Times, CBS News, and CNN have been leaping from the highest windows in the business.

Meanwhile, the market is in love with a bunch of little start-ups that weren't even around five years ago. Bloggers, one-person media outlets, are the hot darlings of this feverish moment. Like the New Economy stocks of the 1990s, these newcomers are sharp, energetic, and fearless.

-snip-

The most recent casualty was CNN's top news executive, Eason Jordan, who resigned after he made a strange statement in Davos, Switzerland, suggesting that journalists in Iraq have been targeted by the U.S. military. It was bloggers who broke the story and effectively drove Jordan from his job.

-snip-

What independent bloggers don't have is the resources or, in most cases, the skills to do the heavy journalistic lifting that the big American outlets still do better than anyone, and will continue to do for a very long time. You can carp all you want about the toadying White House press corps, but we'd miss them if they were gone -- and the bloggers would really miss them.

-snip-

We're having a Dutch tulip moment with the bloggers. This, too, shall pass.
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eat s..t

[Me.]

1. Why Bloggers Are Like Tulips

They keep growing even after being cut, by scissors or ignoramuses

[bemildred]

2. Why media giants are like dinosaurs ...

Big, stupid, and soon to be extinct.