So last week
Steve Rubel did his "blog-only news diet" -- which I
wrote up for Poynter.org. Now comes the "no-blog news diet," to be tried by
Costa Tsiokos (of
Florida Trend, but who's doing this as part of his own
The Critical 'I' weblog). Is he joking? Apparently not. Tsiokos writes: "It occurs to me that a week-long experiment using the opposite criteria -- restricting one's online news consumption solely to mainstream media websites, while completely avoiding blogs -- would offer an interesting contrast. ... Consider that, for a variety of reasons, certain news items generate different levels of enthusiasm within the blogosphere than they do in the mainstream media. ... I think examining the effects of a no-blog diet would inform blog followers on how much (and how little) of the blogosphere's daily memes seep into the wider media world and, by extension, the general population."
While blogs are read by a still-small portion of the population, there are plenty of blog aficionados for whom blogs are a critical component of their overall media diet. Count me as one of those people. I suspect that having to go cold-turkey on blogs for a week, I would be a much less-informed person -- especially when it comes to industry news. No blogs? I shudder at the thought.
