There are a lot of good things about latest issue of Wired, but one of the things I appreciate most is the blogger lovefest contained within. Starting with page 30, there’s a picture of Nick Denton staring out at readers, giving him props for Gizmodo, Gawker, and whatever else he has up his sleeves; then, on page 126, a table lists Cameron Marlowe’s Blogdex as the seventh wonder of the MIT Media Lab world (alas, the table isn’t available online). And last but not least, page 38 of the Unwired supplement gives us a half-page shot of Rael Dornfest, iBook in hand, alongside a short piece about wireless use at conferences.
I’ve had a few conversations recently about how the press remains evenly divided about the phenomenon of personal websites, either lauding them or hating them consistently across all of each publishing company’s various magazines and websites. I’m glad to see that Wired seems to have taken up position firmly in the pro camp, recognizing the diamonds that have sprouted out of the medium.
How could Wired do anything else but promote their own favorite bloggers? It’s a huge mutual admiration society. The Wired mafia spends half its time blogging about the other mafia members, and the other half of the time writing about themselves and how great their new book/article/magazine is. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe Wired as one huge circle-jerk.
• Posted by: Charles on Apr 15, 2003, 7:28 PMUh, Wired could be like the Ziff Davis magazines, for example, and ignore bloggers and their work entirely. What do you mean, “how could Wired do anything else”? It’s remarkable that a bunch of folks with weblogs have this much media presence, your sour grapes about their efforts aside.
• Posted by: Anil on Apr 15, 2003, 7:50 PM