"Blog", Dissected

An interesting book review of the Blogfather's book for your consideration.

Here's a tidbit:

If there's misplaced faith in Hugh's book, it's all in credentialism. He loves the idea that experts -- scholars, lawyers like him, people with lots of academic years behind them -- are blogging and setting the media straight. Far better, that, than all us generalist journalists (say that five times fast) writing on stuff about which we know little. It's a refrain of Hugh's. In a previous book of advice for young Christians, he actually told them they were wasting their time if they didn't matriculate at the top universities, such as his beloved Harvard. No, he did. When Bill Buckley famously quipped that he'd rather be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston directory than by the entire faculty of Harvard, Hugh was, well, preparing to go to Harvard. Hugh needs an anti-credentialist epiphany, and soon.

This is, I think, an Achilles heel of Hugh and some of the other lawyer-bloggers. Credibility is not solely derived from who you are but how you back up what you say. If credentials were the sole consideration, Dan Rather would be Walter Cronkite, Todd Blackledge would be enshrined in Canton, and the Emperor's clothes would have been splendid indeed.

It's tempting to compare the quality of bloggers' credentials with those of their MSM counterparts, but it's also a pointless exercise. For every Harvard-educated lawyer driving a revolution in information and citizen journalism like Hugh, you've got a bootlicking toady like Robert Reich. The big difference between the two is not credentials but credibility---Hewitt's on the right side of history and Reich is sniffing around in Stalin's garbage.