Do “bloggers” in general deserve consideration for press credentials (the original argument)? No. Do some — those who are actual journalists with mass audiences and no interest in Doom stories — heck yeah.

Just because you can publish a website (or in some cases follow the step-by-step instructions to creating your “own” blog) doesn’t mean you’re important enough to be considered relevant.

Belive me … I should know.

I do have a bit of a nit to pick, but it has nothing to do with Gorman or blogs.

You said:

Many, many people have shown that digitization changes everything about access to information. It democratizes information, it allows for nearly costless access to information that previously would be impossible to use, it allows for transformative uses that no one ever considered before…

I enthusiatically agree with the last clause and I willingly acknowledge most of the first sentence. But some of that middle section makes me cock an eyebrow in a Spock-like fashion. Digitization can democratize information, it does allow for greater, broader and for the end user, cheaper access to information [my cynical side says that very little information is truly free and it's more a question of how much gets subsidized, and whether the costs spread across a given community, but that's what I get for hanging out with special librarians].

I suppose my point (other than the one on top of my head) is that the devil is in the details when it comes to digitization, particularly in the current climate. There are many and great benefits to the process, but not all of them are automatic. Digitizing content doesn’t help people on the other side of the digital divide get to it, our current copyright climate encourages content owners to make material less available for the exercise of fair use rights (and first sale seems to be a dead issue entirely for digital material) and on the whole, it’s about as easy to lock down or “disappear” digital content as it is to do the same with “analog” works. And I have a one-word example for you: Elsevier.

So while there was a lot I found questionable/dubious or was plain indifferent to in Gorman’s original editorial, there’s tons of reasonable, serious and thought-provoking questions to be asked about the Google deals and other digi projects. Which I know you know, but I just wanted to remind you, you know?

what it means to dis blogging