Wishful thinking
by Volker Weber
From the clouded crystal ball of Sara Radicati:
Blogging will fade away from the corporate world and be considered a consumer tool, no longer a credible source of news.
Comments
*Snicker*
OK, this was too good to pass up - I blogged about it here.
And me. LOL.
The German weekly magazine "Der Spiegel" has an article about blogs in it's current issue. All in German, of course. They particularly mention how the blogs of this world are a source of vast amounts of information on the tsunami in asia.
A delay in the diffusion of blogs in Germany as compared to the US is mentioned as well. I am not an expert on the blog scene, so I can't really judge this.
"Time" magazine is quoted to have seen the dawn of the blog age.
Especially some blog experiences and stories from the U.S. presidential campaings are taken as an indicator that bloggers often don't follow basic journalistic rules of credibility and integrity, spreading gossip, rumors and hoaxes.
On the other hand, blogs and their authors are accredited to be "watchblogs", the basic democratic, corrective voice, having lead to the discovery of false documents published by Dan Rather and subsequently to his resign as well as the resigning of senator Trent Lott, due to bloggers quoting a rassistic statement of his.
The "Spiegel" authors do claim, though, that "hierzulande" (in Germany) most bloggers lack journalistic and investigative ambitions and compared them with daily soaps, transferred to the web.
A credit as an effective medium for product experience is given though. Jamba, being criticized by the Spreeblick blog for seducing kids to enter contract relationships with the provider without really knowing what they buy.
vowe.net is not even mentioned in the article. Too bad!
Here's another prediction:
TV will never be a serious competitor for radio because people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it. ~Author Unknown, from New York Times, 1939
