Critiquing the Critics

Jennifer Howard at the Washington Post published a meandering, verby harangue about blogs. Her complaint: they've become to cozy and self-congratulatory. Her point is well taken: "Now it's a popularity contest in which the value of information is confused with the cool quotient of the person spreading it." However, she misses one major aspect of the blogosphere: it's a community. It's not supposed to be fair, it's not supposed to be an objective social critic alone. Sure it may be, but people would have lost interest in blogging long ago were it not for the communal aspects - and that includes the us-against-them of bloggers-vs.-media establishment.

Howard then endured a firestorm of questioning, plus critiques from everyone from the InstaPundit down.