For the most part, I'd say these guys got it -- particularly [Jay] Rosen [chair of the NYU journalism department], who drew some interesting comparisons between blogs and the original newspapers that appeared in the London coffee houses of the early 18th century. Those early broadsheets, he noted, were largely the work of individual writers, who commented on political or economic or foreign events they learned about through their private correspondence with other writers.

Rosen's point, I think, is that communications technology may be moving in a great historical cycle. The invention of the printing press -- followed by radio and then television -- created a progressively more capital-intensive media industry, with an increasing division of labor among reporters, editors, printers, advertising whores, um, I mean, salesmen, etc. The invention of the Internet, however, has shifted the balance back towards the individual writer/publisher, doing his/her own thing, reporting or commenting on events they find through their own research, either on the web or off.

The difference, of course, is that what was once limited to a small literate elite in the 18th century is available to millions of people the world over in the 21st. This is a revolution by anybody's definition, and could even, in time, spell the end of the mainstream media as we know it. Or, as Rosen put it: "The age of the mass media is just that -- an age. It doesn't have to last forever."

[...]

[B]logs are doing more than just about any other modern institution (if institution is the right word for something as anarchistic as the blogosphere) to recreate a common communication space, and encourage maximum public participation.

Just because the web is decentralized doesn't mean it's fractured. Thanks to the miracle of Google (not to mention the even more powerful search tools coming on line) any piece of information or artistic content that exists anywhere on the web is also accessible everywhere on the web. This is why experiences (Dean's yeaaahhh!!!) can shared so widely. And the sharing is two-way. I can sit here in Davos and make fun of the scream, and others can flame me for helping destroy the greatest presidential candidate in American history.

What draws all this yacking together into a common space is the natural human desire for community -- for a place to exchange thoughts with other people who share similiar interests or experiences. But that's where the blogosphere begins, not where it ends. How many of us in the 'sphere have had the experience of following a chain of links to a topic we've never encountered before? How often have we exchanged opinions or information with people who are experts in areas that we know nothing, or next to nothing, about?

That's the fundamental difference between the web and the mainstream mass media, which is strictly top down. By splitting the audience into narrower and narrower fragments, based on interests or demographics, the mass media does destroy the public space, and replaces it with a bunch of pipes, or information "stacks" -- as in a processor chip -- that run from Time-Warner-AOL-Capital-Cities-Disney-ABC-Viacom-Fox (or whatever) down to the target audience.

[...]

The net is capable of deciding -- in a completely democratic way what topics it wants to explore. In effect, the news agenda is put to a continuous vote, with Google counting the ballots. Everyone and anyone is free to contest the results, but if the blogosphere wants to talk about, say, Dean's scream, then that will become the metaphorical equivalent of the lead story on page one -- until something comes along that attracts more votes.

This is what terrifies the mass media: the threat of losing control of the news agenda. There were a number of mainstream journalists in the audience at the Davos session, and after the speakers had spoken they stood up one after the other to protest the Brave New World they thought the panel was trying to sell.

[...]

Just the fact that blogging showed up on the agenda at Davos this year is probably a bad sign. I can't shake the suspicion that the golden age of blogging is almost over -- that the corporate machine is about to swallow it, digest it, and regurgitate it as bland, non-threatening pablum. Our brief Summer of Love may be nearing an end.

There's more (I think his comments about the effect of blogging's potentially parisitical relationship with the media -- the "free-rider" problem -- are something that the big-time bloggers, the Instapundits and Atrioses, have to put some energy into considering), and all of it of great interest (so much so that I was tempted to re-post the entire thing here), so make sure to head over to Billmon's Whiskey Bar and take it all in.