John Dvorak of PC Magazine skewers Web logs, and I mean skewers.
Writing is tiresome. Why anyone would do it voluntarily on a blog mystifies a lot of professional writers. This is compounded by a lack of feedback, positive or otherwise. Perseus thinks that most blogs have an audience of about 12 readers. Leaflets posted on the corkboard at Albertsons attract a larger readership than many blogs. Some people must feel the futility. The problem is further compounded by professional writers who promote blogging, with the thought that they are increasing their own readership. It’s no coincidence that the most-read blogs are created by professional writers. They have essentially suckered thousands of newbies, mavens, and just plain folk into blogging, solely to get return links in the form of the blogrolls and citations. This is, in fact, a remarkably slick grassroots marketing scheme that is in many ways awesome, albeit insincere.
Sheesh…it couldn’t be that he’s worried about his boring old print job, could it?
Dvorak is a troll, pure and simple. Declaring something dead is a great way to get traffic to your site. He also regularly declares the death of the Mac, Linux, and whatever else is likely to rile people up.
I enjoy (well-written) blogs by non journalists. What Dvorak says perhaps speaks more about his own agenda but he also manages to put down readers as well as writers of blogs.