“The National Post, on Weblogs”

Scripting.com this morning linked to a story about weblogs (and about Dave Winer, the author of scripting.com) at the National Post. The author (James Cowan) sucks up to Dave, which would be a little over the top if it weren't for the fact that he's right: Dave did a great job covering the events of 9/11.

While discussing the effect that weblogs have had on traditional media, Mr. Cowan quotes Dave,

"If you want information about a certain [computer] product, you'll find it on a Web log," Winer said. "You won't find it in a 600-word review in The Los Angeles Times. The newspaper will skim the surface and tell you a little bit about what the product does but will probably skip the details."

As if to prove that his article isn't part of the 'traditional media', Mr. Cowan's story is more than twice that long. (It's a little too long.) Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to get the real point of weblogs. I'm not sure if Dave meant that a 600-word review was long or short, but the great thing about independent weblogs is not their length. It's their focus and their independence.

If you want to "understand" weblogs, you first need to ask yourself who or what you're interested in. There are weblogs on nearly every topic imaginable. This is independent publishing: people write about what they know and live.

I certainly don't maintain the best weblog, but I have some regular readers because they're either interested in me (like my family and friends), or the technology I work with every day. My stories about Conversant, or Mozilla, or Radio, or my last vacation, or the smorgasbords Corinne whips up, might not be as well written as 1400 words in the National Post, but you'll learn a lot more about them here because I spend more than a few hours writing these stores. These are the things I know best, things I'm an expert on, and that's a huge advantage.

It's not that "amateur journalism" is better than professional journalism. The "point" about weblogs is that the experts (in every field) no longer have to depend on the biased, often clueless "professionals" to tell their stories. We now have our own voices.

I should have had a weblog during my days at R.R. Donnelley, trying to help a big company and all of its customers make the transition to CtP. The media, and even RRD's own sales people, just didn't get it. Unfortunately, that was before weblogs.

Examples

Here are some examples of experts writing about their own "knowledge domains". It's woefully incomplete, as there are thousands to choose from.

• Duncan Smeed is a teacher of Computer Architecture and Design. He writes about computer processor technology, lower-level programming, and teaching at a university.
  
  
• David Carter-Tod is an educator. He writes about "serious instructional technology".
  
  
• Brian Carnell is, perhaps, the exception that makes the rule. He's the sort of weblogger that defies categorization other than to say that he's an "information junkie". He runs weblogs and discussion forums on Animal Rights, Equity Feminism, world over-population, and many other topics, and many of his sites are referenced by "bigger names" in the traditional media.
  
  
• Jim Roepcke is a Canadian WebObjects programmer. He writes about hockey, the evils of the U.S., and of course web programming.