The Rise of the Blog

A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial by Joseph Rago lamented the growth of blogs. Having read blogs for quite some time, and you could even say a blog child of Instapundit, I'm not sure that Rago "gets it." To him, the writers of blogs are partisans:

Because political blogs are predictable, they are excruciatingly boring. More acutely, they promote intellectual disingenuousness, with every constituency hostage to its assumptions and the party line.

Though he might well be talking about me, an editor might have told him that to paint in such broad strokes is to ass-u-me. I'm a huge fan and online subscriber of the WSJ given the credibility they've built over time, but blogs themselves have their uses and if you seek it, you can just as easily find quality as you can crap. The irony of course, is that the WSJ itself publishes thoughts from various blogs from time to time - and even the next day, it printed an article from IraqtheModel.

I suspect the growth of blogs has been stunning especially to the media establishment, particularly how well blogs have capitalized from the latter's failure operating at a speed they can't hope to match. You can track the growth of blogs and various statistics at the Blogger's Blog. For consumers and readers at least, competition has been a great thing and in the end blogs only hold their readership because they are saying something and reporting on issues people care about.