Blogger Navel Gazing

Last night, SpaceyGracey moderated a panel discussion at the Atlanta Press Club to discuss how New Media is changing Old Media. Or at least that's what the panel was supposed to be about, but very quickly it turned into lots of people in the old media asking "what's the deal with blogs?" and associated questions.

I arrived late because I hate downtown Atlanta and could not for the life of me find the tiny strip of Broad Street that's not pedestrian only. (You should've seen my face when I texted someone who was already there saying I couldn't find it and he replied "on Broad Street." Yeah, THANKS. I am not a complete moron, but 90% of Broad Street can't be driven on!) So, rather than sitting in the front row like the other bloggers, I hung out standing in the back. Standing next to me was a woman who had come up with me in the elevator, and who'd told me she was just looking for a meet n' greet before going to an art show across the street, but wasn't interested in hearing a panel discussion. This proved amusing since she suddenly inserted herself into the discussion about 10 minutes in by loudly bellowing from the back of the room about how unlike journalists, bloggers have no credibility. At that moment I actually wanted to walk to the other side of the room so as not to be standing next to the crazy lady who was getting death glares from my blogger friends, but I did not.

I found the panel surprisingly open to the offerings of so-called "new media" and the crowd surprisingly unfamiliar with blogging, with some even openly hostile to it. One woman in particular asked what people blogging about news stories "contributed to democracy" as though a) the purpose of any media is solely to contribute to democracy and b) that's all the vaunted old media does every day. Maybe it was the lawyer in me but I actually wanted more direct pushback than the audience or panel gave to her. You want something that contributes to democracy? How about bringing to light the US Attorney firings? That story started on blogs, was pushed along by Talking Points Memo when nobody else cared about it, and then burst wide open and was picked up by mainstream old media when they finally forced everyone else to listen. It could get an incompetent Attorney General who disrespects the constitution fired. Does that contribute enough to democracy for you? That's the kind of pushback I wanted to hear, but it wasn't there and I wasn't really in a position to take it on myself.

I also found it interesting how focused so many of the audience members were on whether blogs make money, as though turning a profit is the only measure of success. How many burgeoning internet ventures lose money for years before being bought by Google or some other enterprise? How many newspapers, magazines and television stations have been hemorrhaging money for years (not to mention those that have had to undergo significant restructuring recently as a result)? It's about more than making money, but the fact is that plenty of bloggers have turned this into a living either through ad revenue, being picked up by a larger network or media enterprise, or getting the envied book deal. In a way a good blog is like any other startup venture, it's banking on future potential. Twitter's free right now, but certainly the creators hope to make money eventually, and blogs are much the same.

I also found the unspoken presumption that something isn't worth doing if it's not making you money to be troublesome. For those who love to write but can't afford or don't choose to do so to earn their living, blogging is a way for them to create without having to do so as if their livelihood depends on it. It actually gives them greater freedom than paid writers who have to write the stories their editors dictate and which will interest their readers. Often there are concerns about not pissing off advertisers with negative content, or not pissing off powerful political types who may shun that newspaper or television network's reporters in the future if the coverage is too negative. Bloggers have none of those chains, and that freedom is important even if it means less money. Money isn't everything, people.

What interested me most about the whole event, however, was how reluctant I found myself to self-identify as a blogger. I didn't wear a nametag, I didn't go sit in the front row, I didn't seek the opportunity to tell people where to find my blog, and I didn't even feel comfortable strongly defending blogging when it was under attack from some audience members. My overwhelming thought during the whole panel was "pay. me. no. attention. please." I have a strange dichotomy going on here where I blog openly but don't really want to make waves as a blogger or become more well known. I don't seek notoriety or even traffic as a blogger, and I don't take up the mantle of blogging as though it is a cause. For me, as the woman said to much offense from my friends, this is primarily entertainment. I do this because I enjoy it and because it is good practice for my writing, not because I think I contribute anything meaningful to the public discourse. But that's fine with me, because this isn't my day job or even my passion. I'm a lawyer who blogs, not a blogger who lawyers.

I think others ultimately felt more optimistic about the outcome of last night's discussion than I did. Sure, many in the audience expressed curiosity about this blogging thing, and several suggested that the next panel should be all about "how do blogs work? and how do I get one?" But many of them were clearly so fundamentally unfamiliar with the concept of blogging that I fear the medium will be too strange for them to embrace even as a daily reader, at least for awhile. Part of it may be the old journalistic hostility to the notion that anyone can do this thing, and part of it may be an age issue that many people of my parents' generation have not embraced the internet like we young'uns. But until those in positions of power embrace the new media and incorporate it into their strategies and plans, so-called "new media" will still be the bastard child that CNN was when it first began, and the growing pains will continue.

On the way to the discussion last night while stuck in traffic I pondered the changes we've seen to media in my lifetime. I recalled when I was a kid in the early 80s that my parents and I got our news 2 times a day: the morning paper, and the 6:00 TV news. (We didn't get cable until I was 10, so until 1985 it was just the 3 local networks for me.) I think most people from my parents' generation are used to that model, and were unsettled in the late 80s/early 90s when the rise of multiple 24 hour cable news channels changed the concept of news cycles forever. The arrival of the internet in the mid 90s changed them even more by giving consumers the option for the first time of selecting the news they wanted by clicking through to sites and stories, rather than having to watch an entire newscast or read an entire paper to find all the news that interested them. At each stage the saturation of content has risen farther and farther and must feel overwhelming to those who were used to the paper and a 30 minute newscast model. The rise of blogs, podcasts, vlogs, and other new media is once again changing our whole concept of news forever, and many are struggling to keep up.

Last night as Grayson had some technical difficulties playing a DVD for the audience, one of the panelists who appeared to be in her 40s or 50s made a joking comment about whether we had a 12 year old in the audience, and everyone laughed. But that comment had so much truth to it for the people in that room, who largely feel like media and technology are passing them by and they are too old to understand it all. I submit that we will be more successful in gaining full acceptance into the overall media landscape if we help those people along with engaging new media, rather than getting exasperated with their slow progression. As last night definitely showed, many of them are interested and they want to learn even if they feel stupid and clumsy right now as they find their way. Hey, my parents used to think Yahoo IM was a virus when it would pop up, and if they could be brought around, then anyone can.