Is Blogging Dead?

Wired seems to think so. So do a lot of the on-line technocrati. Given that the top of the Google and other search engines are -- as Wired puts it -- on-line magazines rather than bloggers, I'm not so sure.

Twitter is the new blogging, and private email lists the new twitter. We are cycling through vehicles, not messaging.

The two items that seem constant -- people want the information they want, and they want it delivered to them. The vehicles seem irrelevant.

What I do see as a dying venue is the web site. My anecdotal evidence tells me they are reference material, not news sources. It is consistent with communication theory -- we trust those we know the best, and those are usually those closest to ourselves or think like ourselves. Mass communication began with a tribal elder spreading the word by mouth. Now it's a board operator spreading the word by text.

The future isn't better web site design and layout.

The future is better content and the willingness to interact with our fan base.

My constant drum beat to colleagues and coworkers over time has been to watch the magazine racks for layout -- they are paid to be the cutting edge -- and study the politicos for messaging -- they only succeed when they reach the people. Barack Obama is pushing for more transparency in government by putting on-line huge amounts of government documents. One of his few bills in Congress was to create a "google" of government contracts. Why contracts?

Because he crowd-sourcing them.

Notice, the idea wasn't to ask the people what we thought of legislation. Not to get folks looking into the national security apparatus. Not to pour over the pork-barrel earmarks of Congressmen. It was to look through government contracts. The president elect has targeted those recipients of government contracts for the microscopic inspection of thousands of motivated Americans to find the errors, the waste, the corruption.

This should tell us several things. Not unlike bloated Congressional legislation that is often voted upon without being fully vetted, much less read all the way to the end, there is a ton of stuff buried in these contracts (EULA, hello!) that while it is created by bureaucrats, the bureaucrats charged with oversight can't keep up. Like a short-staffed Gannett newsroom, let's get the people to do our work.

This means the peasants are at the gates, pitch forks and torches in hand. Be careful what you unleash in the power of the people. It is highly likely they will do the job you asked them to do, and that can lead to unintended consequences -- perhaps for the people who started the process themselves. Mr. Obama, meet Mssr. Robespierre.

It may also lead to something more important: a more engaged electorate. Here's the thing about working in the sausage factory. You know what's in that stuff, and either you don't eat it or you make darn sure you buy the brats that are rat and sawdust free.

What does that mean for college athletics? Well, fans aren't going to like that schools are spending as much as they spend on some things. At the same time, they might begin to understand why their tickets cost what they cost and begin to make choices. No, we want X-program to be good, and we will support success. No, we're tired to spending money down that rat hole and stop supporting non-productive coaches/teams/programs.

Regardless, for public universities, there is a new day just on the horizon. We have always lived in glass houses -- FOIA, sunshine laws, public funding accountability. The shades are about to open, and standing outside the windows are thousands of folks, ready to look in.

The ones that flourish in this future are the ones who can function effectively while being watched by everyone. The spin, as O'Reilly might say, stops here.

Hmm. Guess I went more than 140 characters.