Blogging Panel

I participated in this panel on blogging today. I was seated on the far left, a fact which I appreciated silently, and sat next to Joe Malchow. This is honestly not meant as an insult, but it occurred to me that, next to one another--he in a jacket and rather fine tie, I in some bland polo and jeans—we must have looked something like those "Apple v. PC" commercials.I'm kind of disturbed that I just compared myself to Justin Long, but I suppose I'll get over it.

The panel was quite interesting to me—it drove home the point that blogs truly do serve a variety of functions, even if certain motivations are common to all bloggers, and certain principles hold at all levels. I left not feeling particularly bullish about the blogosphere—Brendan Nyhan's point that the panel was pretty much made up of the same kind of people who have been providing opinions to the public for decades, if not centuries—lawyers, academics, writers—was well-taken and somewhat dispiriting.

I feel pretty much the same, though. I think bloggers are, for the most part, people who would have pursued some form of verbal self-expression and, in a different time, would have conformed and submitted themselves to editing in order to conduct that pursuit, but who now realize that they don't have to. I know Malchow used to work with The Beacon; I write for the DFP. On a national level, Andrew Sullivan has a journalistic background, as does Josh Marshall, and Arianna Huffington; Michelle Malkin pretends to write. The PowerLine trio (I can't say that without thinking of the supergroup Power Station, which comprised Robert Palmer and some of Duran Duran), Ann Althouse, Hugh Hewitt, John Aravosis, and Glenn Reynolds are all lawyers/law professors (and God knows lawyers are big on self-expression).

More: Professor Samwick made the best point of the whole event, but I wasn't sure how to express it succinctly, so I left it out of my recap. He posted over at his blog about it, however, and it's definitely well worth reading.