Sunday, September 12, 2004
Deja Vu
With the touting of blogs as a new form of journalism, it is refreshing to find analogs in history that appear to indicate blogs aren't all that new. They are, perhaps, deja vu all over again. Here is a passage from the wonderful biography of Alexander Hamilton that I have been reading .
Like other newspapers of the 1790s, Freneau's National Gazette did not feign neutrality. With the population widely dispersed, newspapers were unabashedly partisan organs that supplied much of the adhesive power binding the incipient parties together. Americans were a literate people, and dozens of newspapers flourished. The country probably had more newspapers per capita than any other.... These papers tended to be short on facts -- there was little "spot news" reporting -- and long on opinion. They more closely resembled journals of opinion than daily newspapers.
That's a pretty good definition of many blogs. Nihil novum sub soli.
Like other newspapers of the 1790s, Freneau's National Gazette did not feign neutrality. With the population widely dispersed, newspapers were unabashedly partisan organs that supplied much of the adhesive power binding the incipient parties together. Americans were a literate people, and dozens of newspapers flourished. The country probably had more newspapers per capita than any other.... These papers tended to be short on facts -- there was little "spot news" reporting -- and long on opinion. They more closely resembled journals of opinion than daily newspapers.
That's a pretty good definition of many blogs. Nihil novum sub soli.
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