The Weblog as New-Age CB Radio

Laura Kleiman says she is reading less blog stuff (link).

Anyone find that their blog reading is going down? I for a while now have found myself scanning maybe four sites a day, and really finding very little worth reading. Like gossip reporting, it has its place, but it is all so ephemeral and vapid too. A large part of the problem is, I just don't care about the opinions of most people who write these things, and want information -- high-value, hard-to-get, not-speculative, real information -- not their opinion, which they are often with some exceptions not in the business to offer. .. As for opinion, I'll take investigative intelligence and reporting tenacy over it any day. Expect I'm not the only one who's found their reading habits have significantly changed.

Interesting. But I have been wondering if the blog will turn out in retrospect to be like CB radio—huge flash in the pan, followed by precipitious decline. Other models might be ham radio—I suspect there are still people out there and saying blah blah blah blah, do you read me? Or community access cable—does anybody watch that any more (setting aside Wayne and Garth, did anybody ever?)?

Apparently I still read more blog stuff than Laura (although I wonder if perhaps I never did read as much as she at her peak). But I do note some trends: I’ve got a Google aggregator with a whole lot of links; I tend to skim most of the link titles and read only a few—just as, in another time, I might have canvassed my daily newspaper. For example, I think it is amusing to read those daily headlines from BoingBoing, but I certainly don’t feel the need to follow through every time with the item.

I still tend to pay a lot of attention to a few sites I think I really learn from (Mark Thoma is still an unbeatable aggregator of economics stuff); or that I watch out of a sense of professional responsibility (that would be you, CreditSlips), or for good company (that would be you AE). But there are several blogs that I read with a lot of care a few months ago from whom I have seemed to have gleaned most of what they can offer—on the same principle that you don’t want to take every course from the same professor, because you may just learn the same stuff over and over again. In a way this is just a matter of getting more discriminating with experience: I once thought I had to read every book in the library. Lately I’ve come to understand that a lot of books just have little or no reason for being.

Meanwhile, I find there are other new-agey things that are getting my attention: Mrs. B gave me my first Ipod for Christmas, and I have begun to discover downloaded university lectures. Haven’t actually done an online course yet, but I’m thinking about it.

On the other side of the equation, I admit there are places where print seems to retain its advantage. Example: right now I have online subscriptions to both The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. I have to admit I’m reading both less than I did when I had access on paper.

One small contra-indication to Laura’s point: the hit count on this site seems to creep slowly up, though still in the class of minuscule or derisory. I’ve always referred to it as a “friends and family” thing, but in truth I can’t imagine why anybody reads it: when push comes to shove, it is all about me, all the time. But it’s an entertaining daily exercise, a kind of mental zen: I find myself thinking as I observe just anything, “hm, can I package a snippet about that?” And, I guess I could say, “I think I just did…”