Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Actually, anybody who thinks they can change the world by blogging is deluded

I realize this isn’t your point, but I’d argue that Yon and the milbloggers did, in their own way.  So may have Charles Johnson (the throbbing memo) and the associates there.

All you have to do is wish you had never been born and see what life would have been like without your blogging effort: 

http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/view/NS9zMUmy4Xe7Kt1anVQJZ6UB

"Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.”
- from the movie “Contact”

Nothing is more fun than stamp collecting.

Tell Sweetness & Light.  The blog came up with the original Rev. Jeremiah Wright scoop—and the rest in American election history.  The story went from Sweetness & Light to Rolling Stone, then to Hannity and the NY Times, and slowly gained steam over a years time, when it finally hit ABC News, and then all the major networks.

There have been small victories.

Remember the fuss over the “programmable controlling thermostats?” The ones that allowed the state of California to control your room temperature?

I was surprised as anyone when my article on American Thinker sent that silly proposal down in flames within a couple of weeks this January. (Not that I’m bragging!)

The real power is in normal people uncovering and exposing little facts that would get ignored by the MSM yet resonate so strongly with the real citizens out there.

As for choosing a president - we’re all allowed one vote.

My feeling is that blogs are wonderful for organizing smallish groups of people around relatively specific goals, and getting information and discussions into the public domain that otherwise wouldn’t take place.

What they aren’t good for is mass organizing; even really big blogs reach at most a couple hundred thousand people at most.  This is why a mass boycott organized by blogs wouldn’t work; there’s simply not enough “mass” to matter at a national level.

I’m not sure that there even IS a “right blogosphere”. Most of it seems to be made up of pro-war liberals.

It all depends on what the meaning of “change the world” is. The ‘sphere was highly instrumental in bringing down Dan Rather (in which I played a part), but did this “change the world”? I have never thought so.

However, even though I have slacked off my own blogging quite a bit from earlier years, I would say that the ‘sphere can change the world, although individual bloggers won’t. “The sum is greater than its parts,” to throw out a cliche, and it happens slowly and incrementally. But change it is, and the effects are worldwide.

However, let no blogger be deluded that his or her personal contribution will be individually very great. Each of us are, at best, but a brick in the building.

Just because one person doesn’t have power to affect the WHOLE course of history, every individual should still do their duty to make what contributions they can.

Like Rev. Sensing said, individually, we’re little more than bricks - but let us be the best bricks we can.

The only real significant power of bloggers is to get a story into the MSM.  After Eason Jordan (which followed shortly after Rather), many MSM journalists vowed to give bloggers, especially on the right, no oxygen.  Since then, we have seen a number of compelling stories fail to get national traction because the MSM simply boycotted them (success in Iraq, Libya giving up nukes, economic growth, AP and Rueters malfeasance, truth on Katrina, etc.).

Since then, bloggers on the right mainly feed each other (still significant) and feed talk radio.  But the only real breakthroughs are stories which Fox sees having an effect on a political race, or which are so overpowering that they can’t be shut down.

Bloggers on the right serve as an adjunct to what the WSJ and National Review were long ago and talk radio became in the 80s—information for the choir, but without access to the mushy, middle-of-the-road voter (who decides elections) unless the MSM gives access for a story.

Until the right works to develop alternative ways to get important stories to the uninformed, mushy middle, the MSM will retain its gatekeeper status.

I like to think I’m changing the world one snarky blog comment at a time.

"Ninety percent, or more, of the Blogosphere would cease to exist without the news-cycle. There is very little original material out there.”

I blogged about this topic (Which is better to control: Content or context) four years ago on the lead-up to the last election. While the blogsphere might be producing more and more of the content, the context is still controlled by the mainstream media.