Archive for February 15th, 2002
“So blog this, please.”

Ok, I will.

Henry Jenkins has written on interesting article on web logs, or blogs as they have come to be known.

Bloggers are turning the hunting and gathering, sampling and critiquing the rest of us do online into an extreme sport. We surf the Web; these guys snowboard it. Bloggers are the minutemen of the digital revolution.

While I’m not sure I’d consider this site a blog, I did find Jenkins thoughts on them to be interesting.

What will happen to democracy in the current media environment, where power is concentrated in the hands of a few publishers and networks? Media scholar Robert McChesney warns that the range of voices in policy debates will become constrained. The University of Chicago Law School’s Cass Sunstein worries that fragmentation of the Web is apt to result in the loss of the shared values and common culture that democracy requires. As consumers, we experience these dual tensions: turn on the TV and it feels like the same programs are on all the channels; turn to the Web and it’s impossible to distinguish the good stuff from the noise. Bloggers respond to both extremes, expanding the range of perspectives and, if they’re clever, creating order from the informational chaos.

Jenkins ends his artilce with, “So blog this, please.” OK. Reply to this, please.

Now can we get on with the rest of the Olympics?

Amidst claims of vote-swaping, predetermined outcomes, and other finger pointing, Olympic officials have awarded Canadian skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier gold medals. The Russian team who beat the Canadians in the controversial judging will get to keep their gold medals as well.

The International Skating Union also suspended French figure skating judge, Marie-Reine Le Gougne, saying they had evidence of misconduct.

This story has overshadowed the Olympics to the extent that nearly every other news story was regulated to below the fold. Even CNN is giving this story higher priority than the Afhgani government assassination carried out by its own military.