You've swung fairly wide of my remarks about facts and error-checking, but we can get back to that in a moment.

I'd agree that what distinguishes the blog and BBS media isn't the technical underpinnings, it's the social context. A BBS is about conversation with others on an egalitarian basis; a blog is the very epitome of rugged individualism and ego. I've noticed on blogs that graciously allow comment that there's no mistaking the asymmetric power relationship--replies are in smaller text, of course, but more subtly, the blogger is relatively absent from the postmortem. A blog is a mechanism for making pronouncements from on high, not for talking.

In real life the distinctions aren't that stark. You notice in almost all BBS cultures that stars emerge...bloggers with social skills. I think there are many degrees of online conversational form, actually, and the more the better. People are hard to fence in to one paradigm, and shouldn't be. Lord knows over the years I've seen people warp my software into unanticipated new forms.

I couldn't be too anti-blog if I'm thinking of building "Blogs for Zoners", now could I?

My pointed quibble with blogs is narrowly targeted on the ridiculous assertion the blogosphere is a reliable and superior source of accurate information compared to the existing media. I have this echo in my mind, whose strength approacheth certainty, that we have had this exact conversation before. But I'll take another shot at it, you've given me some new material.

You talk blithely about "checks and balances" as one blogger "fact-checks" another, as if it were something like the refereeing of scientific papers. That's a pretty picture, but over in this universe we're talking about individual bloggers with no actual accountability to anyone. The blogger and his/her critics/debunkers are on an equal footing, leaving the reader to judge what are thus really no more than opinions. And of course, the blogosphere being what it is, the reader will have a staggering abundance of such opinion to read! One asserts, another "fact checks" and disputes, a third disputes the "fact-checking"...a circle jerk does not rise to the level of a news organization.

The blogging-as-journalism system works against the emergence of accurate information; its entropy works hard to obfuscate information...

...as yet. The deja vu part from last time is that I said before, if (and that's a big "if") bloggers are actually sincere about wanting to become the New Journalism, a more formal "ecology" will emerge from the present entropic soup, based on specialization into author, reporter, commentator, fact-checker, editor, and so on, visibly (for the benefit of their audience) connected closely enough that the reader will realize the benefits of enhanced quality control.

It may sound unimaginative to name the species in the "new journalism" with the same names as "old journalism", but the roles don't emerge from the medium, they emerge from something very much like the logic of the scientific method. The process of vetting and quality control is already well-established and understood, and doesn't change because the medium's changed.

I think a lot of people are simply dazzled by blogs as The Latest and Greatest Thing. That they are, but like most L&GT things, it's 99% sizzle. The use of a new medium doesn't excuse bloggers from an obligation to apply the same rigor and discipline as "old journalism".

I can imagine, at the introduction of television, similar talk, about how TV news and the "unblinking eye" of the camera would eliminate the need for scribblers and intoners dangerously interposing their inevitable bias on the news. Now we'd have unquestionable documentary evidence to foreclose any dispute, yessiree! Who could argue with the inherent accuracy and fairness of TV news?

People find a way to screw it up, but it took them a while to figure out how to undermine the veracity of TV news. The problem with blogging is that it doesn't even start at the level of TV news's potential for accuracy, it can only aspire to attain it. TV news went downhill; blogging has to go uphill.

But hey, when blogs are used and perceived appropriately, I think online journals and opinion openly labelled as such are a wonderful thing. Just quit trying to sell me on "the blogosphere" as an epochal development that will "save" us from mainstream media and "bring back" fairness and accuracy in journalism. Gag me, SDAI-Techie!