None more blog

The New York Times solicits a number of viewpoints on the apparent decline of blogging among the young:

“If you’re looking for substantive conversation, you turn to blogs,” Ms. Camahort Page said. “You aren’t going to find it on Facebook, and you aren’t going to find it in 140 characters on Twitter.”

or conversely:

Kim Hou, a high school senior in San Francisco, said she quit blogging months ago, but acknowledged that she continued to post fashion photos on Tumblr. “It’s different from blogging because it’s easier to use,” she said. “With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that’s it.”

Ah, that pesky “having to write” thing. There may be a useful analogy with cricket here. When the one-day form of the game began in the 1960s, traditionalists grumbled that it was a tawdry concession to the shrinking attention spans of the young, and that it would cause the end of the traditional first-class game (for which, read conventional news media).  Except that it didn’t really, although  Test cricket did feel the pressure for a while. Then, as if from nowhere, 20/20 cricket (Twitter, Tumblr, etc) arrived with its cheerleaders and fireworks, catering to even shorter attention spans, and suddenly it was one-day cricket that looked staid and tired, and pundits wonder whether the current World Cup might be the last. Ach, tell me I’m worrying about nothing. Blogging isn’t actually dying as such – it’s just that, in the words of cricket lover Ian Faith, its appeal is becoming more selective.

(Cartoon by gapingvoid)