My experience is quite different from Brian’s. For me the Internet has “always been there”. I had access to its earliest form when I was a grad student at CMU in the early 70’s. Although I became a card-carrying Libertarian during a time when I lacked access to the university computers, that soon changed. I’ve been continuously on the internet from 1983, and a researcher who digs hard enough will find my very libertarian oriented Space Digest postings from that period.
This brings me to a point it has long been my intention to make. Blogs did not come out of a vacuum. Many writers like myself have been debating, arguing and posting for two decades. That’s a lot of practice. We’re not people who sat down one day and said “Oh, I think I’ll start writing about current affairs”. Some of us have been writing for every bit as long as the “mainstream” journalists. Our editors were not our bosses but our peers; they gave us the harsh critique of people who knew the facts and were unafraid to let you know it. You also learned to withstand attacks that could be harsh and personal. Libel? Hah! You just returned fire. Courts were for wimps!
I do understand a little of what Brian says, because I can remember a time when I could say I knew all of the key people on the internet. That is certainly no longer true. I feel honoured to have been in the circles of those early days and that ring of acquaintances is one I still find valuable to me professionally and otherwise.
If there are journalists reading this who have spent their working lives in the traditional print media, the blog phenomena must be quite disconcerting. It seemingly appeared from nowhere around September 11th. Things do happen fast on the net, but I assure you many of us have been writing for as long as yourselves. The format has been different, the rules have been different, but we are really quite as experienced (and blooded) in our media as you in yours.
Back to Brian’s Lament (sounds like an Irish trad song title, don’t it?)… we each add our small contribution. Being the most read or the top rated isn’t what matters. The Internet is our home and its residents are our friends and neighbours. It takes a bit of getting used to, this non-territorial territory we live in, a “place” where your neighbors may be physically anywhere that humanity is to be found and proximity is defined by shared interests and values rather than place.
But it’s a good place and it is where the history of this century will be written.
