Of course, that NY Times article is in essence little more than a rehash of every other story about the Internet taking over people's lives that has been written in the decade+ that the Web has been in existence. They did it with the Web itself, they did it with email, they did it with IM. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a semi-automatic story-generating template for these things at this point.

There was the article on the 2 famous bloggers/prostitutes in DC, and this article. So far the only blogging articles I have encountered via printed news sources has painted blogging negatively.

Has anything positive been written about it?

i think at this point it would be unrealistic to expect anything more from "traditional" media other than what they are currently doing when they cover blogging.

by covering it intelligently they risk giving it credibility, they fear.

knowing full well that if they truly believed in the medium they themselves would have blogs on their websites.

but since they dont, and they fear the imagined new "competition", they come across as condecending and ignorant hypocritical luddites.

when in fact theyre just bad at their day jobs.

I recently read a positive article about blogging in Vanity Fair. I can't remember which issue - it may have been last month's or the month before. Anyway, the gist of the article was that when mainstream media outlets were still being completely docile about Bush and Iraq, intelligent and vehement criticism was coming from bloggers.

"....Tony Pierce sound bite that sums up the entire article....

You think? I think you cut the view way short -- and I liked the piece. And yes, I have read a number of good pieces about blogging in the mainstream press; it's part of what has propelled me to seek them out and to rely on them for a sift-out of news.

It was the quite flattering (I thought) and very interesting piece in The Oregonian that led me to b!X's site, for a single example.

But as to 'summing up the entire article,' why not

"The addictive part is not so much extreme narcissism," Mr. Jarvis said. "It's that you're involved in a conversation. You have a connection to people through the blog."

or

"I was trying to record all thoughts and speculations I deemed interesting," [one] said. "Sort of creating a digital alter ego. The obsession came from trying to capture as much as possible of the good stuff in my head in as high fidelity as possible." ??!!

Even if this statement -- Sometimes, too, the realization that no one is reading sets in. A few blogs have thousands of readers, but never have so many people written so much to be read by so few. By Jupiter Research's estimate, only 4 percent of online users read blogs sums it up, who are we, some neuvo mondo 21st century intelligentsia?

How bad is that?!

Yeah, but do the math: If there are 150 million adult Internet users (which there are), 4% of that is 6 million. That is a much bigger audience than any "mainstream" publication.

Mr Bogdanski! Doubtless you don't recollect my recent (completely manufactured) allusion to your upcoming memoir ... but right on topic with that & this thread is this timely morsel from The New Yorker. My crystal ball must have been functioning at close range!

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040531ta_talk_radosh

Jack, Lars actually sounded quite admiring of both your writing and your position on the Park block deal.

He did note that you were a volunteer at KBOO or as he put it "Communist Radio".

Man, my KBOO days are long over. Still tune in every once in a while, though, just to see what's on. Just about everything except guys like Lars Larson.

I'll admit to listening to Lars occasionally (maybe an hour or two per week in my car). I used to listen more, but the local blogs are more interesting (thank you Jack) and always available for consumption.

Although Lars' discussions are light years from being thorough and his debates are often one-sided (he shouts down his own listeners when they question him), his show covers as many issues each day as 90% of blogs cover in an entire week.

His strength is that he calls things like he sees them. He was the first person I heard to call out the big "O" for labelling Goldschmidt's child rape an "affair".

His weakness is that he continues to see things as he's called them. Take the James Jahar Perez case, where he sided with the cops before the details were out and wouldn't budge afterward. Or Brandon Mayfield, where he still defends the FBI with vigor.

I like the fact that I can get an instant read from Lars on an issue, but I hate the fact that it often comes out before the facts, and once established never changes.

It's like he is afraid of looking fallible before his audience. Unfortunately, that inflexibility undermines him when his message is on point.