When a figure of authority (this is me, but not really me because in this I’m just standing in for The Guardian) reaches out to offer ‘validation’ to an emerging, potentially-disruptive new thing (weblogs), he should not be surprised when the pioneers of that new thing tell him to shove it. Having said that, the reason I offered – by proxy – the mainstream’s validation for blogging was precisely because I’m not a figure of authority. I’m actually a blogger – my connection to the mainstream media is the fact that The Guardian invited me to rate some weblogs.
Speaking as a blogger, I don’t think we need validation from the newspapers or the TV but I think it would be a good thing. So I’m getting stick from all sorts of people (even one person on a train) for grandly extending the hand of ‘validation’ to the grimy bloggers toiling beneath me. And having said all that, this defensive – not to say twitchy – reaction to the Guardian comp from the blogging hardcore really is exactly what happens when anything new is threatened by mass adoption and you guys really are behaving exactly like an elite, albeit a ragged one…