bloggers parasitic on msm? hell no

many people have written about the relationship newspapers have with blogs. some say blogs are going to replace newspapers (although this is an argument that newspapers people make more than the bloggers themselves do). others say the two can be complementary. yet others are saying bloggers are leeching off, or are parasitic on mainstream media.

at first sight, there is certainly grounds to say bloggers are parasitic on mainstream media. after all, bloggers often link and comment on content that originally appeared in mainstream media, and without them, bloggers certainly would have less to write about.

but let’s reverse the question for a second. instead of thinking of bloggers as being parasitic on mainstream media, let’s turn it around and say that bloggers add value to the mainstream media. a useful analogy can be drawn to open source software, used by many people around the world. we don’t say that users of open source software are parasitic, so why do we say that of bloggers? we also don’t say that programmers who have helped linus torvalds build and develop linux are parasitic on his work. so why can we not think of bloggers as building upon, developing further and extending the work of mainstream media? news, just as software, after all is a public good – the more people use it, the more value it has for everybody.