Matthew Yglesias Talks Blogging
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in BloggingTo gain any worthwhile information about any topic whatsoever, you need to be reading the work of someone with real expertise. To develop real expertise requires years of study, research, etc. And years of study, research, etc. can’t be adequately condensed into a blog post. Thus, blog reading is a completely worthless exercise and nobody should really engage in it. I started writing this blog as a hobby; I thought it would be a fun thing to do. And I not only continue to enjoy writing it, but people pay me to write it. But the mere fact that I’m writing it doesn’t make it a worthwhile thing to read, which is why the overwhelming majority of Americans have never read this blog and never will.
So, is this true?
Personally, I’ve never considered myself an expert on anything except being able to find good, relevant information and share it with people in a timely fashion. And every now and again I’ll get the itch to really dig into a topic and dissect it, but I find that it’s best left to people with the expertise that Yglesias mentions.
And while he may be right that most Americans will probably never read his blog, more and more Americans are reading blogs every year. I don’t have the hard numbers in front of me, but the numbers have been growing steadily every year since the publishing platform was introduced, and there are no signs that it’ll be slowing down. So that’s good news for all of us because it means more readers will eventually find their way to our blogs.
What do you think?
This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Certainly, the mere fact that something is written does not make it worthy of reading, no more than my singing while driving makes me a worthwhile listen.
Replace bloggers with reporters and does the analogy change? If not, and I see no reason to believe traditional msm reporters have any greater “expertise” in what they report, and it stands that reading newspapers is a worthless exercise.
The overwhelming majority of Americans will never read a NYT, WaPo, LAT, or Tribune. Does that lessen there worth?
And I agree with where I think you were going: if the purpose of a blog is to quickly disseminate the best available information, is subject-area expertise the goal?
July 12th, 2008 at 7:30 am
redhorse makes good points. I blog and read blogs to pick up cues on how people think, dissect issue. Reading blogs often leads me to read work by “experts.” In fact, since I’ve started reading blogs, I’ve read more by experts than I ever have. If you stop at blogs, well, then Yglesisa has a point. But if they serve as a portal to the information he apparently likes, then I think they serve a very good purpose. Besides, I’ve never believe the experts have all the answers. I put more stock in that whole wisdom of crowds thing.