The Neph and the Fifth Estate

Here's a picture of Neph, the good-looking boy who arrived last week, earlier than he had said he would arrive. We'll forgive him, but he needs to learn to give his mom a phone call first so she can have dinner ready. Kids are so inconsiderate these days.
Isn't he a handsome kid? I hear he's already putting on a couple of chins, like a good baby should.

I've been thinking lately about blogging and journalism and the fact that several major newspapers have gone bust lately, due to lack of circulation. Newspapers and TV news have taken to lamenting that people my age tend to get our news from the Internet, because, they say, we trust bloggers who may or may not be up to any good and who certainly don't have journalism degrees. Blogging is a new phenomenon, they say, bringing news down to the lowest common denominator.

I got to thinking about it and came to the conclusion that blogging has less to do with the lowest common denominator than it does with the tradition of the self-published pamphlets of the eighteenth century. Given that "anyone can write and reach the people" led, in that century, to the beginning of the United States and of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire respectively, maybe blogging is not such a bad phenomenon, even if you get the occasional jerk blogger and even if the majority of blogs are as unremarkable as the majority of pamphlets were.

But you can't really blame the poor old newspapers and TV news folks. They feel they are fighting for their livelihood. (Maybe they should stop condescending to their public? No, no, that would be stupid.) And in any case, I don't really have a greyhound in the race, this isn't a news blog and I have no ambitions for a readership bigger than the fam. (How much can someone unrelated to me really want to hear about Miss Boo, anyway?)

Speaking of Miss Boo, she needs a nap badly, so I will let you go for today.

Cheers,

Breanna