Blogging News

A couple bits of blogosphere news caught my attention this week which included --

• "Bloggiest Cities"
• Labor Unions

Now this was the first time I have ever seen the word "bloggiest" ever used especially as an adjective. Today's USA Today newspaper contained one of their "Snapshots" graphs which depicted the "Bloggiest Cities" in the USA in terms of "Posts (on blogs) per 100,000 Residents." The top five cities deemed "bloggiest" included:

• Boston with 89 postings
• Philadelphia with 88
• Pittsburgh with 53
• Washington DC with 51
• Portland, Oregion with 49

Interesting results here since the top 4 out of these 5 cities are located in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region of the USA while the fifth city is in the Pacific Northwest. What I found most surprising was that the high tech communities in California were not represented on this list. This list inspired me to call an "all staff" meeting at SpaceBeagle to explore ways we can get the Minneapolis/St. Paul region on this list next year so please keep reading and we will keep posting :-)

The second story comes from the left wing ("progressive") of the blogosphere as reported by the Associated Press (AP). According to the AP a "loosely formed coalition of left leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union...... to help them secure health insurance, conduct collective bargaining, or even set professional standards."

Yes the US Constitution protects every citizen's "right of assembly" and I do support workers who choose to form labor unions but a labor union for bloggers is not a good development. Why? Because from my perspective the Internet and the advent of blogging is the second phase of the decentralization in journalism first caused by the invention of the Gutenberg Press. The sad reality is that labor unions -- while they have improved working conditions over time -- especially in the blogosphere run the risk of causing group think as its members pressure their peers to buy into the collective's perspective on issues.

News reporting and personal opinion -- like my blogs -- should continue to be decentralized not subject to control by union bosses.

Todd