Becoming what you despise
by xinit • 1/21/2005 • meta---ging • 1 Comment
pc4media points to a short entry where Steve Rubel makes an interesting observation that the Blogging Conglomerates are starting to become a bit of what they hate;
Congrats to Jason Calacanis – our winner of the week. One of his blogs, autoblog, turned down the opportunity to run VW’s suicide bomber ad. Increasingly I believe that the big blog networks – Corante, Nick Denton’s Gawker Media and Calacanis’ company – will begin to distance themselves from other bloggers.
This is something that I’ve been seeing in Jason’s writings; the apparent desire to move to a system where people have to follow very specific writing guidelines and obey their leader’s commands. That idea about forming a Blogging Ethics Committee comes to mind, as do a number of attacks on people doing things that he doesn’t agree with; “I TOLD him not to host this; I TOLD him not to do that.” It sounds like he wants to be BlogMom.
>> This is something that I’ve been seeing in
>> Jason’s writings; the apparent desire to move
>> to a system where people have to follow very
>> specific writing guidelines and obey their
>> leader’s commands.
First off, I don’t consider myself anyone’s leader. The fact that you make it out to be so heavy handed on my part is silly.
I can’t tell anyone what to do… I make my case and the 3,999,999 other folks blogging can go do whatever they want. Even the folks who blog with WIN could leave at any time. I can’t control them or tell them what to do, and I would never try.
My style is to state my position and make the best arguments I can for my case. In the case of ethics, I think people should be honest with readers and keep advertising out of their blog posts. I don’t think that is so radical… do you?!?!