On Forbes' "Attack of the Blogs": behold the power of mainstream media

Chris Pirillo fired back as part of the blogging community's collective rejoinder to Forbes' "Attack of the Blogs" article, and touched on some very key arguments. The blogosphere is ripe with salvos of commentary about what's seen as a highly offensive piece...after the magazine admittedly took a very well-timed first shot.

Chris is dead-on in his blog post, but in so doing proves new media's challenge in winning over the unenlightened masses, those not yet living the web lifestyle: new media, in the grand scheme of things, still plays second-fiddle to mainstream media in getting the word out. MSM continues to own the world's greatest distribution channel - timeliness aside, traditional mass media still circulates way better than new media, because more people enjoy newspapers and magazines than their digital equivalents.

So whether the Forbes piece is a brutally honest look at what many in the blogosphere are too myopic to realize, or serves as a gross mis-report as a means to stave off something the magazine is threatened by, the damage is done. Forbes is institutionalized enough to influence those who aren't blogging to shy them away from it. And that's the power of today's big money media machine.

In many cases even the slightest exertion from a major corporation has more immediate influence and greater lasting effect to the fairweather consumer than years of passionate community drive and development. Take podcasting for example: you can argue that prior to the release of iTunes 4.9 this past June, the platform was still underground; it never really took off with mass appeal until Apple rolled out subscription support for DIY radio shows via the iTunes Music Store. A similar argument can be made for video podcasting - it won't really be "accepted" until Microsoft bakes support for it into Windows Media Player v.Next.

Being fortunate to simulaneously swim at both ends of the pool (being involved in MSM and participatory journalism), I'd like to comment on Chris' conclusions:

• Some magazines now use articles as a weapon, unleashing swarms of critics on their rivals.

Certainly. The typical bias and/or political siding of publications, networks and affiliates use their own products as catalysts to incite retort. This works either intentionally for or against you - there's no such thing as bad press.

• The print-driven haters have formidable allies amplifying their tirades to a potential worldwide audience of 900 million.

Ah, yes...misery loves company. MSM's numbers may be diminishing and support may be moving towards Internet-based distribution, but they still get the word out to a mammoth reader base. Here's a great example of a well-known, powerful player making a bold statement...in contrast to hundreds of obscure 'Netizens few outside the blogosphere know about posting their responses.

• Attack magazines are but a sliver of the rapidly shrinking periodicalsphere.

That's true. I'm wouldn't necessarily pigeonhole Forbes in the same category as The National Enquirer, but the article certainly did what it apparently set out to do: make a controversial statement that's polemical, not political. The amount of feedback generated from the article is HUGE. Which was probably by design. It'll sell magazines and get people talking.

• A magazine columnist can go out and make any statement about anybody, and you can't control it. That's a difficult thing.

I'm not so sure about this one. Most magazines, legit or otherwise, have rigid editorial practices with staffers that pore over every word as a means of projecting a message. Isn't the beauty of blogging, podcasting and the like the fact that we can react, create, publish and distribute our thoughts as raw as we want them to be, sans such editors? In new media we enjoy a lack of control...formal print houses still have to pay their writers, so there's "quality" enforced at some point.

• Even some magazine columnists see the harm they can pose.

Sure they do. It's the dream of any writer to walk down the street and have an entire community of people talk about their story, editorial, commentary, or report, in ANY context. It's critical to get such notoriety to advance your career to the next step. In this line of work, apathy towards your work is a fate worse than death. Get people to say something - anything - about your work to provoke a thought or invoke an emotion.

• Yet magazines edit and censor print content all the time - to protect their own interests.

Of course they do. And so do radio & TV stations, web sites, etc. - part of any commercial concern is to generate profit. Which means not pissing off the right people. (In this case such a community evidently excludes bloggers.) That's one of the main advantages of new media over traditional censoring: open feedback and constant interactivity.

So while we're going to salvage what we can and launch our own offensive against the piece, we've got a ways to go until we have an equal circulation chain and amount of credibility as mainstream newspapers and magazines. We've got the advantage in archival: the sheer volume of posts ripping the article already far outweigh and will likewise lean people to think the piece is inaccurate. I'm still pushing the concept of everybody being "the media". As a proud blogger I feel slighted by the piece, but the paid journalist in me also sees the point and gets the larger message.

We're getting there, but this round goes to Forbes.