How Many Blogs Does the World Need?

People had been predicting it for years, and in 2008, it finally happened. This was the first presidential election dominated by the Internet. Those ancient debates about whether the Internet lowers journalistic standards and drags the Mainstream Media into the slime have become irrelevant. For a large chunk of the electorate--the young chunk--the Internet has become the major source of information.

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But while the chin pullers can hold their symposiums about the quality of that information, it's the quantity that's truly remarkable--and oppressive. Way back in 2004, when we last held an election, no one was complaining that there wasn't enough to see or read on the Internet. And that was before YouTube, Politico, Huffington Post, Twitter and Facebook became daily or hourly necessities for millions. In 2004 newspaper websites were still mostly "shovelware"--the paper edition reproduced. They weren't bloated with blogs and video and interviews with the reporters who wrote the story. But now everyone has a blog. The opportunity for us all to express an opinion is wonderful. Having to read all those opinions isn't. In 2004 there were probably still more people reading blogs than writing them. Not so now, or so it seems. And even if most blogs are skippable, there are one or two or maybe two dozen worth checking out a couple of times--or maybe three or four times--a day just to be sure you're not missing anything. (See the Top 25 blogs.)

Then there are the sites that are supposed to help you sort the wheat from the chaff on all the other sites. They filter out the stories you can ignore, and they aggregate the ones they think you should read. Some have computer algorithms to do their sorting, while others induce readers themselves to do the heavy lifting. Sixty-three percent of those who enjoyed a story about cannibalism in suburban Paris, it turns out, recommend another story about werewolves in Rio de Janeiro. Hey, better check it out.

Fine. But aggregation has become a hall of mirrors. "Did you see Romenesko this morning? Yeah, very interesting. He's got a link to a piece in LA Observed that links to a column on the London Times website where this guy says that a Russian blogger is saying that Obama will make Sarah Palin Secretary of State."

"Wow. Sounds true. Where did the Russian guy get it?"

"He says it was in Romenesko."

And if readers are suffering from information overload, imagine the new life of political writers. First, they have to be totally up to speed to make sure that some blogger or newspaper competitor hasn't already made the point or reported the factlet that they intend to write about. Second, they have to be fast, fast, fast to beat that other fellow to the punch. This has always been true in journalism and used to be considered part of the fun. But it's less fun when half the people in the world could now be that other fellow.

Third, while an article a day used to be a typical reporter's quota (or in the leisurely precincts of newsmagazines, an article a week), reporters are now expected to blog 24/7 as well. Not only that, they must perpetually update their stories, as in the old days of multiple newspaper editions. And they may well be handed a voice recorder and/or webcam and told to file audio and video too. Meanwhile, they are glancing over their shoulder and awaiting the Grim Reaper from HR with word of the latest round of layoffs.

How many blogs does the world need? There is already blog gridlock. When the Washington Post editorial page started a blog before this year's conventions, participants (I was one) were told: Don't forget that the Post political staff also has a complete set of blogs. It wasn't clear what we were supposed to do about this, but the implication was that there are only so many aperçus to go around, so don't be greedy.

The great thing about blogs, in my view, is that they share the voice of e-mail. It's a genuinely new literary form, which, at its best, combines the immediacy of talking with the reflectiveness of writing. But many readers may be reaching the point with blogs and websites that I reached long ago with the Sunday New York Times Magazine--actively hoping there isn't anything interesting in there because then I'll have to take the time to read it.

See the 50 best inventions of 2008.

See the 50 best websites of 2008.