Blogs are worth what their content is worth.

If something worthwhile is being shared, it's useful. If not, not.

Have I mentioned you are in a wee bit of an Adam Smith rut?

I dunno. I just posted a note on facebook that I didn't post on my blog. I wanted to get something off my chest but it didn't fit the contnet of my blog. Was that self-censorship? Is my expression limited because noone reads notes on facebook, just the relationship updates? My blog is a focussed work-in-progress on a focussed subject area. I suppose I could have a general blog but, your eminence Iand a few others) notwithstanding, general blogs are either dull, political propaganda in disguise, or irrelevant unless the reader knows the blogger. I guess if one is a writer or always has things to put on record or get off ones chest, then blogging is the way to go. You can write all the time and even design the layout of the blog, add graphics and visuals, etc.. In this way, it is certainly a better avenue for the expression of ideas than flickr or facebook. Is this freedom? It is certainly liberating....

It can be a burden, too, given my schedule of posting.

I suspect that, if the flea has his way, blogging will be steam punk with pixels.

I like running my own blog, commenting on a few, reading a few. I doubt blogs will change the world but, on the other hand, I managed to eliminate a Troother Liberal candidate by taking a close look at something blackrod wrote which I found at Dawg. I pushed it up the line to Kate and Kathy and it hit the NP.

Start to finish - 20 hours. Just long enough for the CJC to jump in and take the credit.

Blogging is publishing on a relatively small scale. Publishing is an honourable activity.

And, to give some sense of the numbers: at one point I published a small literary/political magazine which we gave away. We printed 10,000 copies a month for about $3000.00. We mostly broke even but were stuck with the bill if we didn't.

I have between 300 and 700 uniques a day coming to my blog. Call it an audience of 10K a month...And it costs me exactly nothing. I break even.

Pixels are cheaper than paper.

"... I managed to eliminate a Troother Liberal candidate by taking a close look at something blackrod wrote which I found at Dawg. I pushed it up the line to Kate and Kathy and it hit the NP..."

With all due respect to that event (which I say truly), is that really all that much? Wasn't there a far greater promise of blogging than nipping at the heels of the pack's lame stragglers? Hasn't uncovering a few flakes been about the only thing bloggers can point to as an accomplishment? I don't think it has led to greater general openness and transparency - maybe the opposite going by Harpers words in 2004 to 2006 compared to his deeds 2006 to 2008.

Well, Alan, I have done a fair bit of politics in my life and never come close to eliminating a candidate before Election Day. A little heel nipping is good for the general health of the herd.

Nothing prevents bloggers from doing the investigative work you are suggesting. And I suspect we will see more of it. The point being that publishing is no longer the exclusive preserve of people who buy ink by the barrel - we all have our own barrels of pixels.

Yes, and that is what I meant from respect.

But I do thing there is actually something that prevents bloggers from doing that which is a something that is not often dealt with: we are able to cross reference the internet but for God's sake don't ask any of us to actually go out and meet another person or - God forbid - actually put a new idea into the ether.

I am not blaming you for the limitations of the internet but I wish we would call "citizen journalism" what it really is "citizen copy editing"/

Well, Alan, I did phone up the candidate's HQ and talk to her poor, shell shocked, campaign manager. And I was all of five minutes behind the Globe and Mail.

In actual fact, a blog plus a phone and a willingness to use it and you have all the tools of MSM.

However, to be fair, when I ran the lit mag I got to go to lots of lunches with semi-famous people and I got shipped literally boxes of books. No more, alas, no more.

But, again not blaming you for the internet, how many times have you picked up that phone, how many leads have you hunted down, how many meetings have you attended. Even if your answer is "a few" or "some" than it is still a story of vast lost opportunity and over assumption about actual affect. When bloggers report from Finance committee meetings at all levels of government on a regular basis I will see change.

Al, I don't know if its your intention to veer into political philosophy with all this questioning of the (f)utility of blogging but... it seems to me that you are (subconsciously?) pointing out the tension between a writer who might have this view: "I am an individual with fundamental individual rights and freedoms. Hear me roar (on my blog)." And a writer who has to consider this view: "For me to continue roaring, I need sustenance, and to obtain sustenance, I must get remuneration. I must find someone or some group who is willing to pay me to roar. To get paid to roar, I may have to roar about what my paymaster wants or curtail my roaring to things that those who will pay roarers actually want to hear or read. In which case, I may actually have a duty to this audience to, at least, be credible."

In other words, am I on the right track in inferring that you are suggesting that if internet based writers are to be credible (to achieve their goals as citizen journalists), they need to be less atomized, less purely individualistic, and more socially responsible in a "social contract", if not socialistic, sort of way?

You keep me out of this. Ideas need to be examined in their own right.

Okay, so let's extrapolate: Bloggers publish at almost no cost to themselves and therefore are not beholden to anyone else either directly or indirectly. They are obligation -free if not responsibility-free and can write without responsibility. But without a sense of responsibility to others in society (ethics?), the journalistic value of the writing is limited. If bloggers engaged more with other elements of society beyond themselves, they would gain a greater sense of social rights and responsibilities, not to mention a readership that would be interested in what they are writing.

I think that is true if you call yourself a "citizen journalist" and not just a slob with an internet hock-up. "Blogger" itself is not a defined term in relation to the quality of the content.

I agree with your friendly amendment.