Another article in Wired News about weblogs, this time addressing webloggers' roles in taking down Trent Lott. Nothing particularly new or different in it, except there were some quotes of note from Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California's School of Journalism. First she says,
"Bloggers are navel-gazers…And they're about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books."
That part is funny. But then she says,
"There's an overfascination here with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting."
Which is just foolish and ignorant and demonstrates that Ms. Osder hasn't spent much time following the happenings of the (ugh, I hate this term) blogosphere.
Without expertise? Hardly. Have a look at Joshua Micah Marshall's short bio, or Dan Gillmor's about page. Without reporting? She must have missed the whole Kaycee Nicole saga. And without resources? She must not understand much about the Web or blogging at all. Not only do we have sites like Google at our disposal, but we have the distributed knowledge of a diverse readership. As Dan Gillmor likes to say, "my readers know more than I do." There are domain experts for nearly anything you can possibly imagine. Weblogs provide a way to connect and share that knowledge.