Three examples of great blogging

Sunday, November 16, 2008 by Dave Winer.

There's not enough great blogging, so when it happens, it's worth pointing out. 

First what do I mean by great blogging? 

1. People talking about things they know about, not just expressing opinions about things they are not experts in (nothing wrong with that, of course). 

2. Asking hard questions that powerful people might not want to be asked. 

3. Saying things that few people have the courage to say. 

Most blogging, like most journalism is pretty easy-going as you'll see in some of the responses to the three examples below. That makes it harder for people to do the right thing.  

So here are the three examples. 

1. Allen Stern asks if others are uncomfortable that the President-elect is posting his videos to a commercial website, thereby favoring one company over another. (Most people answered no, some people put him down for asking the question. I said I support his concern.) 

Update: Dan Farber addresses the issue head-on. As any reporter will tell you, the appearance of impropriety is every bit as bad as the impropriety. The incoming President can be forgiven (briefly) for favoring one company's product over another, but the dominance of that product is, imho, the opposite of an excuse. The President-elect should help create competition. I think competition is so important it should be written into the Constitution (it's not there unfortunately). The fact that the CEO of the company is on his board of economic advisers is a problem in its own right, and is compounded by Obama's favoring his product over competition. Yes, it matters. It really does. 

2. Duncan Riley says, despite my kind words for Gabe Rivera, his algorithms are hidden and not clonable, and that there's a difference between sharing the feeds of the most-quoted sites and the sources he scans. He's absolutely right about that, and it's a question that should be dealt with, one way or the other. Either Rivera should disclose his algorithm and sources, and keep it current, or people should stop considering his sites anything other than his personal opinion about what's important. And even if it were just his personal opinion, its disrespectful of his readers to not say what his criteria are. People are scared to question Rivera because the algorithm is hidden, so they fear that if they're critical they'll stop getting pointers from TechMeme or Memeorandum, and because of his close relationship with Mike Arrington, whose site has always dominated TechMeme. These are things that would never be tolerated in the MSM, and shouldn't be in blogging. Riley has the courage to say so and that's appreciated. 

3. Marc Canter expresses disappointment in the people who are being appointed to the Obama transition team related to tech policy. His points are all valid, I've had the same concerns. It makes it easier to express those concerns because Marc went first.  

We owe these people more than the gratitude for having the courage to say what's obvious. So many others would rather look away from because powerful people don't want their secrets revealed and have ways of punishing people they don't like. Once one person sticks their neck out, it's easier for the second person to. To me, that's what blogging is about. Saying what needs to be said. 

Update: Already getting pushback about the MSM line. I was thinking how most newspapers endorsed a Presidential candidate. They didn't just say "You should vote for Obama" -- they explained why they were saying that. This helps the reader understand the bias of the organization behind the newspaper, and their reasoning process. If the editorial board supports one candidate, it might be hard for them to tell you bad news about that person, or good news about his or her opponent. People have a right to know how you arrived at your decision, and if you're not saying why, that should also be explained. As far as I know, Rivera has never said one way or the other. Even so, I find value in his sites.