Readership levels aside, and as for making sure that blawgs continue to maintain their relevancy to the outside world, I don’t know if their influence has really taken such a downward trend. It seems like a lot of people are still catching on to the blogging phenomenon. For example, NPR continues to feature bloggers on its shows, and with increasing frequency. NPR really only started to pick up on the blogging trend in 2003. A quick search for “blogger” on npr.org reveals that in 2003, we were lucky to hear reports on blogging on two consecutive days (it looks like the average then was maybe 1-2 reports per week, if that). NPR now broadcasts several reports on blogging every week.

But even if blawgs never influence the outcome of a Supreme Court case, or the USAG’s interpretation of international treaties, I’ll settle for being able to read some stellar blogs that might only influence a handful of people.

David Denby in this week’s New Yorker bemoans the “delivery” of “film” to iPods because FILM IS VISUAL and the tiny tiny tiny tiny mp3 screen does diminish the art of film.

Not so writing.

A guy driving a dented mid-80′s Datsun truck tosses the New York Times on my porch every Sunday. Because I like newsprint.

Fiber optic cable delivers the same news across the Pacific to my 30 year old step-son in Honolulu. He either LIKES reading on his laptop or he prefers his Sunday paper to be free.

But whatever the delivery system, we’re both reading the Sunday Times because it’s WELL WRITTEN. Smart. Textured. Deep. Thorough. Insightful. Informative. Entertaining.

We COULD simply get our news from Yahoo and we do. But it doesn’t replace the Times (or the New Yorker or Harpers) because we like to read. We like — we might even NEED — to be inside someone else’s subjective experience on a regular basis. Someone really really really really smart and well-informed.

Blogs are just another means of delivering good writing (and, unfortunately, bad).

People who don’t like to — who are not DRIVEN to — express themselves in writing — will likely stop blogging and find more relaxing or enjoyable pursuits.

That will leave the rest of us. If we were stranded on a desert island, we’d find a way to make writing implements and scour the terrain for a portable flat surface to write upon.

We’d stick scribbled-up palm fronds on tiny rafts in the hope that our solitary daily island experience would reach another mind, another heart, another soul.

We write and we read because we need to. Whether we’ll call our medium a “blog” or a “blook,” a magazine or a journal, a web diary or a weighty tome is entirely beside the point.

Cheers!

Vickie Pynchon

the Settle It Now! Negotiation Blog

http://www.negotiationlawblog.com

I told a few of the leadership at CO that, while not a law professor, I usually learned something at the site even while discarding the slant by which the info is presented. In order to comment on this site, I feel compelled to have my facts lined up before puting word to screen. This is also true at my own smaller-scale site. This forces me to read, think and write in a more focused manner – all good exercises.

But while I read CO for a variety of reasons, I decidely don’t read it for a potential “more direct and speedy influence on matters of public concern.”…and, with your delightfuly earnest liberal slant on most matters (which I will admit can be a source of entertainment for me), I hope any such influence is at best contained within the already-converted. But you do highlight issues and legal happenings that I probably would not be immediately aware of and at least give a reaction that gives me a taste of the issue/decision at hand. That can be a useful filter in deciding what matters to read deeper on.

Again thanks for the open invite for last night and I hope you have similar functions in the future.

Why? Because law profs have nothing of value to add to public debate and understanding? (I hope that’s wrong — I sure have been acting on the perhaps naive assumption that it is.) Because there aren’t many law profs who want to bother influencing public debate? Because the eclectic Althouse model is more attractive?

Just curious why you think the prospect is so bleak.