Oh, Those Terrible Bloggers!

Via Clive Davis, we get this example of how the legacy media looks at bloggers:

Mr Sifry reckons that about 75,000 new blogs are created every day, ie about one new blog a second. And just to address the gibe that blogs are like Christmas toys - to be played with once and then discarded - he estimates that 13.7 million blogs are still being updated three months after their creation and about 2.7 million people update their blogs at least once a week.

Professional media folk are predictably incredulous about this. Why would anyone write without being paid for doing so? And, besides, who do these people think they are, gaily airing their so-called ‘opinions’? Jean-Remy von Matt, the CEO of a German advertising agency, spoke for many in the media industry when he fired off an enraged email after bloggers had effectively sabotaged one of his advertising campaigns. In the email he called blogs ‘the toilet walls of the internet’. ‘What on earth’, he asked, ‘gives every computer-owner the right to express his opinion, unasked for?’ (emphasis mine)

Now, I have no idea just what the advertising campaign in question is, nor do I know how bloggers could effectively "sabotage" it (although I suspect there's a good story there, if anyone wants to tell it), but the arrogance implicit in von Matt's question reminds me an old Wizard of Id poster I used to have. When the King is informed that the peasants are revolting, he drily comments "They certainly are".

Clearly, von Matt needs a copy of this book.

Of course, at the risk of sounding just like a peasant, I should mention that I've always been a fan of toilet-wall graffiti.