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« Tuesday « March 15, 2005
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Attention Deficit (remix)
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Keith Jenkins, Black male, WaPo Editor: "Today, I work in a newsroom with Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic-American, Native-American, and Indian-American journalists, as well as many journalist born and raised in other countries...you get the picture. It has taken 'Mainstream Media' a very long time to get to this point of inclusion - which, in reality, is just about reflecting the true nature of American and world culture both in what we report and how we report it. There is still a long way to go, but much progress has already be made. My fear is that the overwelmingly white and male American blogosphere, hell bent (in some quarters) on replacing the current ranks of professional journalists with themselves, will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one."Steve Levy, white male Newsweek columnist, asks, "Since anyone can write a Weblog, why is the blogosphere dominated by white males?" Good question, and while we're at it, although it might not be related, but since any experienced executive, and there are hundreds of thousands who are non-White and non-male, can run a company, how come the Fortune 500 is dominated by white male CEOs?
Rebecca McKinnon, white female former TV reporter, asks, "So how do we get more diverse voices into the blogosphere? I'd like to hear more suggestions from non-white as well as non-American bloggers." Would she ask this question if more of those white male bloggers paid attention to her? But then, linking is like a digital form of knockin' boots and some guys don't link, but if they did, would they like her in the morning?
Jeff Jarvis, white male media pundit and bloggeur provacateur, says, "I'm white. I'm male. I blog. You got a problem with that? Tough." There's a nice, open, constructive attitude, but he follows up that lead-in with a painfully long post, which reads like a rationalization, something or other about reading Iraqi and Bahraini Muslim blogs makes him more diverse. OK.
Halley Suitt, white female writer: "It's all too often -- white, male, American bloggers -- who get our attention." Well, you are the boss of you; maybe you should direct your attention elsewhere.
Dave Winer, white male software developer and alleged blowhard, says, "Apparently Nostradamus predicted white male blogging." Yeah, that helps. Thanks. Please fix RSS 2.0 and shut up already!
But if only people would look harder, they'd find bloggers (which I like to call "writers") like, Michael Bowen, aka Cobb, Black male technology professional: "I hereby submit Cobb for the consideration of all A-List Bloggers as the Head Negro in Blogs." Of course, this is tongue-in-check humor at its most sublime. Cobb just wants to be the H.N.I.C of Blogging, but he often has interesting or provocative things to say, if only more people would pay attention.
The first thing that comes to my mind is: people are really overestimating the importance and impact of weblogs. And mainstream media is not going to be replaced by weblogs. Or, maybe I'm not getting it. People seem to think that because the Web has a potentially global reach that all the world wants to (or can) read what they have to write. Do these people realize that a so-called New York Times "best-seller" only has to sell around 40,000 copies? Even a top-selling book has a tiny impact in terms of actual reach, Oprah's Book Club notwithstanding. In fact, in the book world, there's a creeping fear that there's too many books and not enough readers. Not only are people overestimating the blogosphere's reach, they're overestimating literacy and Internet adoption rates. According to UNESCO, 20% of all adults in the world are illiterate. And less than 20% of the world's population has ever touched the Internet. The best-connected, most literate people are in countries -- guess what -- where you'll find lots of white males. So, there are billions of people out there who can barely read, and many more who've ever even heard of the Net, let alone weblogs. What do they care?
I think I know what's really going on here: it's high school, all over again, but in reverse. Today's so-called 'A-List' bloggers were the "freaks and geeks" in high school. Now that they've somehow become "popular," there's no way they're going to give that up, because they know, as soon as one of the real cool kids gets in, the whole place (aka "the blogosphere") will get overrun, and once again, they'll be marginalized. So to answer the Newsweek reporter's question: the reason why blogging is dominated by some white males is because they where the ones who were dominated -- or ignored -- during those all-important teenage years, and payback's a bitch, well, actually, not a bitch, since women aren't really welcome, just, well, tough! Unfortunately for them, though, the cool kids still don't care.
Related:
Blogging while black (Technorati)
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