Mr. Know-It-All #6: Blog Tectonics

Thanks to my success with Twittercize, I was asked to guest lecture for a graduate Internet Marketing Communication class at the University of Denver. For one week, the online students obliged my rambling, opinionated self. This series of blog posts excerpts some of my answers. Special thanks to a real marketing whiz, Lora Louise Broady, for asking me to participate. You know I loves the spotlight.

There are so many blogs out there. Do you think a hierarchy will ever establish itself or any easy way to tell the good from the bad?

There’s something going on right now that I like to call Blog Tectonics. Please let me bore you with an explanation of the my metaphor:

On the Earth’s surface, things appear solid, stable and consistent–reliable (mainstream media). Beneath is a molten mess (bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, etc.). But that hot mess (are you getting my Perez Hilton reference here?) naturally rises and finds cracks in the crust. When a major eruption or earthquake occurs (recession or technological advancement or both), the landscape is suddenly transformed. That red-hot lava cools down, becomes stationary and erosion kicks in. The old crust gets pushed underground and recycles, so there’s always new hot stuff underground waiting for its day in the sun.

We’re still in the middle of an active journalistic volcano. Bloggers are getting hired by major mainstream publications (BikeSnobNYC wrote his first column for Bicycling Magazine this month) and downsized print journalists are turning into bloggers.

Furthermore, partly because of this fact, there there’s been some culture clash. I distinctly recognized this during the Democratic National Convention here in Denver. Google and Digg set up “The Big Tent,” a two story blogging palace during the DNC. Media credentials were required for admittance. While waiting in line, I watched security put a print reporter from the Boston Globe through the ringer. When my friend (who was blogging for Playboy.com; I pretended to be her photographer) approached the table, we were both admitted immediately with smiles and free smoothies. At other times my friend was treated like a pariah–simply because she carried the dreaded “dot-com” on her press pass.

So, to finally answer your question, I honestly don’t know what will happen. I’d like to think that readers will always follow great writers and accurate journalists, but I also think savvy bloggers who use hypertext and video have a distinct advantage over text-only types.