RSC Partners, Inc.

In a lengthy cover story in the February 20, 2006 issue of New York magazine, Clive Thompson looks at blogging almost exclusively through a business prism and we think that is a mistake.

His fundamental premise is that the blogosphere is an oligarchy, with serious barriers to entry. He argues that large “corporate” blogs with huge financial backers are destroying the grass-roots nature of the blogosphere, and he denigrates the influence and credibility of what he calls “C list” blogs.

Thompson muses:

“Yet the rapid rise of the Huffington Post represents a sort of death knell for the traditional blogger…”

He asks the rhetorical question:

“Will professionalization turn blogging into media-as-usual? Or will the idiosyncratic voice of the lone blogger prevail?”

Our point is simple: while we find nothing inherently objectionable about “blogging as a business,” we think there will always be room for the “idiosyncratic voice of the lone blogger.”

Sure, only a handful of sites generate big bucks and command the stratospheric traffic of a boing boing or daily kos (and they actually raise the profile of smaller blogs by linking to them occasionally), but those are not the only criteria by which a blog should be judged.

At the end of the day, all bloggers want more traffic, but one must not forget that, for the most part, bloggers blog because they are passionate about a given topic, and often, a blog’s quality trumps its quantity (traffic).

Two sites that can make or break an issue here in Los Angeles– LA Observed and Mayor Sam– have only a fraction of the traffic of Gawker, for example, but they can shape public opinion in ways Gawker could never imagine.

The blogosphere is the voice of the grassroots, and it is a voice that is growing louder every day. The “corporate” blogs so admired by Thompson will continue to sell their ads, make their money, and they could ultimately morph into the same kind of media gatekeeper the blogosphere was created to circumvent.

But “C list” blogs so readily dismissed by Thompson, will continue to empower the grass roots and they will continue to offer news makers a direct channel to news consumers.

Blogs To Riches [New York Magazine]