The Inquirer's Sylvie Barak recently went to SXSW Interactive (South by Southwest, a yearly media festival) and witnessed firsthand the remarkable gathering of the social interactive media elite (?):
""What are you doing," this INQ reporter asked a preoccupied-looking individual in the blogger's lounge during a daily "tweet up" (Think loud, self-obsessed people in weird clothing typing away feverishly on Macs). "Retweeting a tweet about how to be a better twitterer," came the reply."
Barak's article is mostly in jest, but it speaks a particular truth about blogging: many, many blogs are created simply to gain its author money or popularity, and still more are about the regurgitated topics of how to make money blogging, SEO, and advertising (disclaimer: on the other hand, there are very many creative and original bloggers out there).
I have, myself, noticed a particular trend in the blogosphere: blogger A reads several blogs about blogging in preparation for creating his own blog about blogging, which blogger B will use in the future to guide herself toward creating her own blog about blogging, etc., ad infinitum, until the universe ends.
It's a vicious cycle.
I'd also like to mention the general nature of the blogosphere. It's an interesting thing with its own systems and accepted roads to success: list and pillar posts, blog carnivals, social networks. There are many accepted, pre-defined ways to drive traffic to your blog which most bloggers at least try to follow, and in so doing create something that often feels disingenuous at best.
As for blogging replacing journalism (the article is titled "Bloggers declare journalism dead"), I don't see that happening. Blogging can be an extension of journalism, and journalism can and in fact does occur within the confines of blogging, but I do not see one destroying the other.
And I've just now realized how stupid the words "blog" and "blogging" really sound.
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