Nothing New Under the Web
By Jonah Goldberg

Opinions are like Dershowitzes (my term for a portion of the human posterior not printable in magazines of this caliber…you get the point): Everyone has one.

Just because a person has something to say doesn’t mean it’s worth hearing. But don’t tell this to the bloggers, of whom you’ve probably heard by now. Indeed, considering their growing numbers you’ll probably be one yourself by the time this column is published.

Just in case you still don’t know what a blogger is, here’s the quick tutorial: A blogger is someone who runs a Web log. What’s a Web log? Just another word for a World Wide Web page that is updated a lot. Blogs are lone-wolf sites that report and dissect the day’s news as the author or authors see fit. The form and content vary wildly. There are fascist blogs, gay blogs, Star Trek blogs, Catholic blogs, science blogs, and blogs for every flavor of conservative and liberal. New blogs are reportedly created at the rate of 40,000 per month. There are between half a million and one million blogs out there, depending on how you count.

The only thing growing faster than blogs is the hype over blogs. Bloggers talk about an ever-expanding “blogosphere” which will transform the way ideas and news are disseminated and consumed. Because a lot of journalists and academics spend a scandalously large fraction of their time surfing the Internet, and because bloggers tend to inflate the importance of established journalists—even when they are criticizing them—the mainstream media has largely fallen for the story. Newsweek, for example, recently asked “Will the Blogs Kill Old Media?”

The answer, of course, is no.

First, blogs are nothing new. The number of bloggers has grown because of new software that makes it easier for people to post their opinions on the Internet. Yet millions of people had their own personal Web pages before this software came along. Matt Drudge, the only person to get rich off of blogging as far as I know, was an ur-blogger.

Bloggers admit this all the time but they miss what it means for them. Doc Searls, a “well-known blogger” according to the New York Times (have you heard of him?), told the Times that new software tools “have lowered the threshold of publication almost to zero.” He adds: “Now everybody can publish their own Poor Richard’s Almanac.”

That’s great. Consider, though, that many of these almanacs may be fictitious, duplicative, deranged, sloppy—or just plain stupid.

Don’t get me wrong, I think some bloggers are great. My own Web column was initially written in a semi-blog format and National Review Online has even launched a multiple-author blog called “The Corner.” But what many of the blogger-revolutionaries don’t understand is that while blogging may be big news, bloggers probably won’t be.

Imagine if I told you 50 years ago that, by 2000, the world would consume billions upon billions of hamburgers. In fact, I’d inform you, millions of people wouldn’t even take the time to get out of their cars before buying one at a “drive-thru” window and scarfing it down. Would you immediately run home to perfect your own recipe for hamburger? Would billions of burger-seekers find you among the millions of hamburger artisans? Probably not. Especially when customers found out that millions of these innovative burgers tasted like socks and caused gastrointestinal roller derby.

Sure, a few great burger recipes might rise to culinary immortality. And yes, many chefs would find psychic reward in the praise of a few friends and neighbors. But most people would still go to McDonald’s.

The future of blogging isn’t all that different. The most successful blogs—at least in the world of politics—are either produced by long-established writers like Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan, or they are associated with major publications like National Review, the Wall Street Journal, or the American Prospect.

Should the marketplace show its appreciation by generating significant revenue for a blogger, you know what will happen? A big newspaper or magazine will offer him or her a job. That’s why McDonald’s sells fajitas now. And that’s why bloggers aren’t going to put serious media publications out of business. 

—Jonah Goldberg