I'm trialling a new stats counter on this site. Anyone having trouble with this page due to the scripts doing odd stuff, please comment and I'll dump it. Not worth the hassle!
Blogs are the future of news, for me.
In future, news will come to me via blog. I will subscribe to blog by subject matter. Each blog will serve as a curator for one news subject. Some will be very specific, others will be big-picture views of a field. One blog could focus on Middle Eastern news, another on general science news, another on news of the ecological status of the arctic, another on the Chicago Bears.
Each blog will build trust from its readers by reliably presenting every significant story connected to this subject matter. Each blog curator will add value by providing context, assessing the veracity of the story, and providing links to relevant background information. Blog curators will *not* deconstruct or attack stories on these blogs - this is not their function and will reduce value. This kind of comment can happen on a separate blog channel.
Of course, the simple act of selecting a story to cover, and providing context a certain way, does provide a sort of comment - it is impossible to escape some degree of bias and framing in any news service. Blog presentation minimises the problems associated with this by being self-consciously personalised. As a reader, I will select blogs on topics that are of interest to me, and over time I will get to know the personalities of the blog authors.
Curator blogs will voluntarily associate with each other to make semi-formal news networks. News networks will operate in a dense, flat network rather than a hierarchy.
News will come straight off the wire services, paid for by advertising leveraged across the whole network - the advertising, like much online advertising, will be content-specific and at a remove from the content providers, to remove undue 'Manufacturing Consent'-style influence.
It will be easy to select the news content you are interested in following and build it into a single newsfeed. It will be possible to follow multiple blogs on one topic, particularly valuable if the topic is contentious (e.g. anything political).
Newsblogging is work. Some people will try and not do a good job. PR operations will set up shill curators. Other curators will be offered pay-for-play deals. Reputation will be everything. It will still be much better than the current system.
This system will effectively function as a parasite on the mainstream media services, while simultaneously raising the profile of good content from other news sources such as Indymedia. In time, freelance journalists will be able to offer their content direct to these news services - writing articles, then getting the word out wide to the relevant newsblogs, getting linkage and eyeballs in response, and earning their keep via the advertising revenue on their own pages. Some people are already doing this.
The infrastructure isn't quite there, but soon it will be.
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All the above speculation performed with not a single coffee in me yet today. Anyone want to deconstruct this or present a more plausible scenario?
Something is up with comments. Hmm. Will investigate.
EDIT: the wonderful Mr Ritchie has done some monkeywrenching behind the scenes. Hopefully things are in order now. If errors are encountered, please to be emailing to me.
As in, January races past. Back in Wellington. Travels completed. Big Day Out attended. Kapcon played through. Return to usual pattern of life theoretically underway.
So much to blog about that I doubt I'll get to all of it, or that when I do get to stuff, it will be such old news no-one but me will care.
Think I'll trial a new blog style this year, posting on a single subject as-and-when rather than making omnibus rambling posts each weekday. Have also decided to start organising the content on here before it gets so enormous that I'll never get it done, so categories are now enabled, although they're mostly not being used. Tags should be following soon.
I have a feeling that this years blogging will be slightly different to last year's, as that year's was to the one before. Change is necessary! If nothing else, we're in for a lot of politics this year with NZ and US elections going on, so that'll no doubt occupy me more than in previous years.
And there's about six new additions to be made to my blogroll. The local blogosphere is jumping. Shout-outs, of course, to the AdditiveRich massive, and the endless generosity of David who keeps the whole thing rolling on.