#lol

on thursday legendary blogger jason kotte declared that blogging died this year

i think it’s more accurate to say the fad of blogging is dead.

as jason noted there are still lots and lots of blogs out there and many are really good.

but simply because it’s no longer the trendy thing doesnt mean it’s dead.

id argue that now is the time of the real blogging. people nowadays have lots of avenues in which to speak their minds.

and some can do it in 140 characters.

or less

now that the money aspect is pretty much gone.

and the struggle to gain and maintain an audience is tougher than ever.

i argue that if anyone is blogging regularly now, it’s because they mean it.

there was a time when 22 million people watched super cool fonzie on happy days each week.

nowadays the cool belongs to don draper on mad men, whose top numbers peak at 2.7 million viewers.

but no one is saying television is dead.

if anything they’re saying we’re in the middle of the rebirth of television

while praising the surplus of really great shows,

and very entertaining trashy ones.

why isn’t blogging looked at in the same light.

who broke the biggest stories in sports this year? deadspin, a blog.

who broke the biggest stories in news this year? glenn greenwald, one of the best bloggers ever.

sure he didn’t break the snowden story on a blog, but when you watch him defend himself  on twitter

you are reminded how good he was running his salon blog up until august of last year.

speaking of last year, who completely made a fool out of karl rove by mocking him

as he correctly predicted president obamas reelection as if he had flown into the future and zoomed back

to accurately call the results in every state in the united states. as if it aint no thing.

how is blogging dead if at the highest level it has had two of its best years ever?

it’s a bad thing that lots of lazy would-be bloggers have migrated to pintrest

twitter or facebook where it’s easier and quicker to share a quickie little idea

or snapshot of dinner?

if anything id say that group’s defection has only made the blogosphere leaner and more interesting.

powerhouses buzzfeed and upworthy might not be traditional blogs, granted

but they owe a lot of their success to blogging, which they are more similar to than anything else.

so is it bad that blogging has spun off some of the most successful websites of the last few years?

of course not

if anything it proves that blogging still has a lot more to contribute to digital media

it’s just doing it so fast, and usually so much better than the traditional outlets that cover it

that it feels like theres no more buzz around it.

that peace doesn’t mean it’s dead,

it means we’re in the eye of the hurricane.