News Slant

I think opinion, agenda, facts, and news get mixed into most news media.I took the liberty of adding comments (in bold) to a recent Tribune article by Mr. Richard Ecke posted below; picking and choosing pieces of information from his same source to support my own slant. The article by Ecke reviews a recent article in PC magazine this month about blogging. So this is a critical commentary about a newspaper article review of a magazine article. (Yes I need to get a life.)

(Disclaimer: this is not meant to be critical of Mr. Ecke. He is a good reporter and I enjoy his writing.)

Bye, bye blogs? by Richard Ecke
(Helloooo…Blogs! comment by Hawkeye)

PC Magazine offered an intriguing take on blog-mania in its March 6 edition. Blogs are logs people keep online — blog is short for weblog — hoping to attract interest from other Web surfers. (or newspaper readers!)

How people are able to devote the time to keeping up their blogs is beyond me, but it's clearly a popular phenomenon. (we're all losers Rich, soaking up company time)

Anyway, the article cited research by the Gartner group predicting blogging would peak at about 100 million blogs this year, then eventually drop back down to a mere 30 million blogs. (A mere 30 mil? Or 10% of the population unless some have more than one. Who yeaah what about the Gartner group? They won the Nobel prize for accuracy in blog predictions I think. Notice its just a forecast, as in, I think the stock market will be going up 6% this year.)

The article also cited a Gardner statistic that 200 million blogs have already been abandoned. (Probably like loser mutual funds, they were just renamed, and are still out there stalking us. The PC magazine article indicates that.."Blog search engine Technorati pegged the number of active blogs at around 56 million this past October. By January 2007 that number had grown to 63.2 million, with 175,000 new blogs begun each day." Click here to compare blog growth to newspaper circulation chart.)

It quoted an analyst noting some blogs can be boring. (It also quoted an analyst who says blogs are exciting!! Does the term n=1 mean anything? What does it take to be an analyst? Since I, Hawkeye, am analyzing at this moment, am I not... an analyst??)

Other blogs can be entertaining and thought-provoking. ('but not electric city blog, they are mean to us and scoop us all the time, we hate them'). In the Great Falls area, some bloggers keep track of the news, critique the media and even generate news of their own. (Some on occasion even spell words correctly and don’t split infinitives, even those blogsters who have jobs outside of just reporting and opining on the news.)

There's no doubt some of the more interesting blogs will continue, as long as their hosts stay interested and get the feedback they're looking for. (We need the affirmation. We're lonely. There's no doubt however that while newspaper circulation and readership decline, weblogs will continue to thrive if they can as PC magazine says., "maintain the authenticity that made them such a good read in the first place". Referring to blogs in general of course and not really my posts so much)

Richard Ecke writes a weekly column on city life. Reach him at recke@greatfallstribune.com, or at 406-791-1467 or 800-438-6600.

Hawkeye is a part-time blogster and general wise-ass who writes late at night after a couple of beers. Reach him at http://www.ecityblog.blogspot.com/

UPDATE: Sorry Hawkeye, our friend David beat you to it by a day or so!