Blogging sure ain't what it used to be!

I'm sure I'm not the only blogger who who considers blogging a fantasy journalism career.

Not everyone can get published in the mainstream, paying press, but anyone can open a blog and post away! The blogging medium is so flexible. We can be political pundits, photo-journalists, satirists, movie and book reviewers, personal columnists--anything! The cyber-sky's the limit!

Then just as we were beginning to have a really grand old time, what do you think happened? Suddenly everybody's blogging, and I'm not talking about grandmothers, like me, or high school students. I'm talking about The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, IMRA, Bibi Netanyahu, Hillary and Arutz 7! Of course that's a very partial list of a mushrooming phenomena. If I'm not mistaken almost every publication with an internet edition has "blogs."

I have a question for you, the true bloggers of cyberville. Are all of those real blogs?

Does Bibi blog over a cup of coffee in the morning like I do? Apparently not, or at least not in English, since his blog ends with "This blog was translated from Binyamin Netanyahu's website."

All of these, uhm-what should we call them?- "establishment" blogs see very well-written, well-edited, spellchecked to perfection. That makes me suspicious. Real blogs are ... well, "unplugged." I guess that's a good term. I like the term since it connotes something raw, unvarnished, pure, uninhibited, since we have no boss, no editor.

Just compare the length of the "establishment" blogs compared to your average independent blog post. I'm including the formerly independent bloggers who've been coopted into the establishment. I don't know what instructions they get, but their posts don't have the honesty and innocence I see in the independent blogs. It must be very inhibiting to know that thousands of total strangers may be reading about your ingrown toe nail or how your "little darling" pished up his carseat. Oh, that's not quite what one blogs about in The New York Times. Right, when you know that the readers aren't going to get to you because they googled "stain remover," "spreading butter" or "embarrassing moments," you try to be a bit more profound.

The establishment press chooses blogs to represent certain "types of people." It's rather inhibiting to be representing a sociological sector of society. It's also a "great responsibility."

Our "independent" posts are considered long if they surpass three short paragraphs, while the "establishment" blog posts are like long op-eds. The late Art Buchwald rarely wrote so many words in one of his brilliant articles. That makes me wonder. Do you think that if he had been alive and well now, would his editors tell him that they were going to repackage him as a blogger?

Now, since the establishment is taking over blogging, what does that make us?