A worthwhile consideration of blogging and MSM We feel Jay Rosen is an intelligent man but sometimes just a little too close to the Jeff Jarvis Blog Boosters' Club.

Human intellectual endeavors often become wrapped-up in or consumed by process. On a good day, surveying the fields of academia, publishing or the arts will find at least 80% of the focus on egoistic froth and navel gazing not furtherance of intellectual or cultural enrichment: People are funny like that. Throw in some money for the banality to get downright cutthroat. But nothing in the blogosphere looks like that, right?

There is scant discussion, anywhere, of the meta-details that will matter in the shake-out of blogging and MSM. Once we moved past desktop publishing in this digitally fueled information age, an entirely new dynamic came into play: The filter/aggregator.

We are in agreement with Mr. Rosen in that blogging is an extension of literary traditions. We prefer to think of it more towards the nature of the tumult caused by the appearance of the novel. Nothing new about the idea of a story but damn egotistical for an individual to write one.  ¶ 8/08/2006 06:59:00 PM