Over at Slate, Jack Shafer has a good critique of the ongoing hype surrounding blogging and the true believers’ claims that blogs and podcasts will bring Mainstream Media to its knees. Shafer rightly points out that the big media players have always figured out how to adapt to new technologies. A lot of journalists working for established media outlets have their own blogs now. And sites like MSNBC and The Guardian actively promote their blogs. Blogs are not the harbingers of a revolution, much as some people would like you to believe otherwise. Let’s be honest; blogs still exist at the periphery of public consciousness. How did blogs even manage to move in from the absolute fringes of media culture? Because they started getting coverage in magazines like Time or on the cable news networks. I promise you, the bloggers who are most vocal in their distaste for big media are also the same ones who would leap at a chance to get on the cover of the NYT Sunday Magazine.
I’m listening to the Current, the new music station in the Twin Cities that’s part of Minnesota Public Radio. The format is pretty good. No commercials and no obnoxious DJs. The playlist does skew towards alternative, but I’ve heard some Johnny Cash and some Nas. I hope they do some programming dedicated to specific genres like electronic or soul/hip-hop. It’d be a shame for the station to cater exclusively towards the black-turtleneck hipster set. But at least I have another station to listen to in the car besides the news station.
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