May 26, 2005
The blogger phenomenon: democracy, anarchy, or what?
By Bill Kraus
Several years ago in response to a question about the state of religious institutions in this country, Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee said, "The Catholic church is holding its own, the mainstream Protestant churches are losing lots of members, and the evangelicals are rising like a rocket."
The analogy to news sources is imperfect but useful.
If the question is not where do people get their religion but where do they get their political information, the current answer would be that TV is holding its own, the print press is losing lots of readers, and the political bloggers are rising like a rocket.
One of the leading political bloggers told me recently that 30 million people get their political news and opinions from blogs and bloggers.
He also told me that this was the purest form of democracy, sort of an instant New England town meeting for everyone.
Another participant in this discussion said it was more like anarchy than democracy.
At the very least it seems to be sort of Gutenberg run amok. It's like when Gutenberg invented the printing press, only everyone got one, almost free.
Is it journalism? Is it babble? Is it something else? Or is it simply scary.
Whatever it is, it is growing and it's, not unlike the evangelicals, very important.
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