To Blog or Not to Blog, That is the Question

After Time Magazine named "You" as 2006 Person of the Year, several members of the mainstream media, including Brian Williams and George Will, were quick to jump all over Time, decrying the amount of worthless content being posted in many blogs and Youtube videos, while extolling the professionalism of their own media outlets. On the other side, bloggers declare themselves the last true bastion of truly free press, without the need to appease advertisers or gain wide circulations/readerships and breaking down the old maxim "The press is free, as long as you can afford one"

In a level-headed, measured defense of "You" on Time.com, recognizing there is indeed a place for all of us in the world of publication, Steven Johnson writes:
"...there's no avoiding the reality that the shift from pro to am comes at some cost. There is undeniably a vast increase in the sheer quantity and accessibility of pure crap, even when measured against the dregs of the newsstand and the cable spectrum...The problem with spending so much time hashing out these issues is that it overstates the importance of amateur journalism and encyclopedia authoring in the vast marketplace of ideas that the Web has opened up. The fact is that most user-created content on the Web is not challenging the authority of a traditional expert. It's working in a zone where there are no experts or where the users themselves are the experts.

It may very well be that, as George Will wrote, that you won't find any Ben Franklin's or Thomas Paine's online blogging today, but by giving everyone a forum to potentially be discovered, maybe you will. Brian Williams splits the difference, "The larger dynamic at work is the celebration of self. The implied message is that if it has to do with you, or your life, it's important enough to tell someone. Publish it, record it ... but for goodness' sake, share it— get it out there...The assumption is that an audience of strangers will be somehow interested, or at the very worst not offended...The danger just might be that we miss the next great book or the next great idea, or that we fail to meet the next great challenge ... because we are too busy celebrating ourselves."

Are you, in fact, the new e-Benjamin Franklin? Is your blog the next "On Liberty"? If so, send your link to George Will to shut him up...and send it to me, so I can crib material from your site for posting here.