Uneasy Rhetoric

In my previous post, I wrote about a little tit-a-tat over at Blue Oregon. Eyes for the Brambles expands on that a bit with some comments on 24 hour cable news (the Blue Oregon stuff was newspaper focused) and on self-publishing generally:

There are two points I want to make. One, before there were blogs there were zines. Years ago, I published a zine…. Today, I blog. It is a fun vanity project, and nothing much will probably ever come of it. The only difference: I probably have more readers as a blogger, and I feel a part of a larger community.

Two, insofar as blogs take part in mainstream media culture, their raison d’etre is to talk back to the Goliath that is the 24-hour cable news cycle. As we know, CNN and FOX also try to make sense of the news. That is why they are crawling with pundits.

I tend to agree that 24-hour cable news, and the 24-7-365 availability of news generally on the internet, have made bloggers what they are. Certainly, there are all kinds of blogs, and many blogs, mine included, span several genres (food blog, political blog, tech blog, local blog). Blogging may still have hit the big time without the cable news networks - I, for one, almost never watch them - but it would be a different kind of beast.