A morning of surfing through the rapidly expanding political weblog scene takes me to Harry's Place, where there's been some good stuff on the diminishing quality of debate on some US political weblogs. It's a thought that had been forming since reading Jeff Jarvis denounce American dissenters as "cultural traitors" a few days back, and Harry's does a nice job of articulating what's happened, and bringing together some supporting linkage.
A highlight is a quote from Dr Frank: "The blogosphere rewards hyperbole. Strongly worded, over the top denunciations get far more attention (links, trackbacks, little digital pats on the head from celebribloggers, commenters saying "you go girl" or the like) than temperate criticism. If you're a blogger in search of more traffic, you know what you have to do. Even when you're not really angling for attention, this dynamic is always in play in the blogospheric ecology: your over-the-top, hyperbolic posts will get linked a lot, while your measured, reasoned, temperate ones probably won't."
That shrill, extremist voices are more likely to bring in the punters than moderate, reasoned ones is not a new notion for "old" media. But that, and the hard-nosed drive for pageviews which has always been "a-list" blogging's biggest dirty secret, will still likely disappoint the more idealistic bloggers who hoped their brave new world would nurture a different kind of debate.
