? old bits of nothing says, vis a vis the snobbery of the J-Team:
If the journalism-with-a-capital-J crowd is calling it a fad, perhaps they are scared at the prospects of admitting there is something useful in weblogs, and it’s a smoke shield.
That they’re scared is a given; the challenge is to recognize that they’re using two tactics to undermine the threat: one is the snobbish put-downs in the print media, and the other is active co-option, or pushing the Blogosphere toward banality. Behind the high-profile banality you’ll often find Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, handing out cash and exposure; Fox News and the London Times (publisher of Sullivan’s linkless manifesto) are both News Corp properties. But that’s just a coincidence, of course, because News Corp has so many properties they’re involved in all things mediarific by necessity, from tabloids to dailies to networks to satellites and even to set-top boxes; they’re pretty big in James Bond movies too.