Wall Street Journal on Blogs

Not new, but newly relevant in light of the past few days sturm und drang about blogs and a national association's president-elect. Peggy Noonan wrote, in the February 17 online edition of The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, an article called "The Blogs Must Be Crazy." She writes comparing bloggers to the "MSM" (mainstream media) and remarks on the, um, tensions between the status quo and the new frontier. "When you hear name-calling like what we've been hearing from the elite media this week, you know someone must be doing something right. The hysterical edge makes you wonder if writers for newspapers and magazines and professors in J-schools don't have a serious case of freedom envy."

She concludes: "I have seen friends savaged by blogs and winced for them--but, well, too bad. I've been attacked. Too bad. If you can't take it, you shouldn't be thinking aloud for a living. The blogosphere is tough. But are personal attacks worth it if what we get in return is a whole new media form that can add to the true-information flow while correcting the biases and lapses of the mainstream media? Yes. Of course."

And isn't that one of the foundations of librarianship, the "true-information flow"? Yes, I thought so. Keep thinking out loud, my blog people brethren.