Blogging's Next Big Thing
Category: MSM/Journalism/etc... Navel Gazing...
Posted Thursday, May 05, 2005 at 01:58 PM [GMT-6]

The introduction of Pajamas Media by A-lister Roger L. Simon has many bloggers scrambling to get in on The Next Big Thing. In this case, it's a vision to rival anything Tolkien ever dreamt up: one Blog to rule them all.

OK, perhaps that's a bit dramatic. The concept behind Pajamas Media is relatively simple, and yet almost breath-taking in scope. The plan is to recruit bloggers around the world to provide local news to an aggregator, along the lines of the Associated Press. The aggregation of this input will ostensibly provide one-stop shopping for those who want to get their "realtime" news via bloggers. In return for providing the product, the participating bloggers will get a wider audience than they probably attract on their own, and they stand to gain financially via shared ad revenue.

As of a couple of days ago, PM had signed up 170 bloggers and, presumably, that number will continue to grow rapidly as word gets out. That group may include one of our own, Wallace over at Streams, who is enamored with the idea and has spoken directly with Simon about it.

It's also brought to light at least one almost identical proposal which, had the funding been available, might have cut the legs out from under PM's plans. If nothing else, the fact that two groups of savvy folks came up with the same idea almost simultaneously would seem to give it some legitimacy.

I have mixed feelings about the concept. As I wrote my pal Bryan over at Arguing with Signposts, the co-conspirator of the competing idea linked above, I'm torn between the allure of wanting to be a part of The Next Big Thing and the desire to remain untainted by any hint of external influence. If I'm going to have my blogging influenced, I want it to be solely by my own irrational and chimeric biases and motivations and poorly understood neuroses.

I suspect that the vast majority of bloggers don't want to be journalists (in the conventional media sense of the term). And, believe it or not, some of us aren't even interested in making money out of blogging. But for those who have the talent, training and desire to report and analyze newsworthy events on their blogs, this aggregation idea seems to be a dream come true, and I wish them the best of luck.

For the rest of us, however, this might be a good time to reacquaint ourselves with the concept behind the Coalition of Unpaid Bloggers. That way, in five years when we find that we have, indeed, missed out on fame and fortune because we refused to join The Next Big Thing, we can say that we meant to do that.

Technorati tags: Coalition of Unpaid Bloggers | Pajamas Media | News Aggregation