Hans Across The Interwebs

This week’s big story on the web is how bad the standards of reporting are on the web. It’s about the complainers hating on the blogosphere. My Take: Hey Winer and Evans, change your reading habits!

Dave Winer would go so far as to say that the end is near, because journalistic standards are going down the toilet, while blogospheric group behaviour is going rampant. Winer wishes it was 1997 again, when men were men and bloggers were smart and insightful. In an ironic twist of fate, his story is now #1 on tech aggregator Techmeme.

Mark Evans tries to give some sort of explanation for why many blogs are just so bad. The short of it: original content doesn’t drive traffic; original content takes too much time out of bloggers’ schedules.

Sure, there’s some flocking behaviour out there. The not-so-negative explanation could be: bloggers want to be part of the conversation; so you have to jump on the band wagon sometimes. I know that’s part of the reason for me. Evans also mentions this.

I was a professional journalist for years. I understand how important sources are. I like to have original content as much as the next guy. But for me, blogging is different from writing tech stories for CIO-magazine or InfoWorld (The Dutch versions, if you’re wondering). Sometimes a blog post is just a way to start a conversation. And to learn from it, or just to enjoy it. It’s like a discussion in a bar among friends about something we all find interesting.

Now, I do know some people who will ask me to quote my sources during a drunken discussion in bar (annoyingly…). And sometimes that’s appropriate for blog posts too. And you can even add them yourself. For many blogs, the comments are AS important as the original post. But that’s just me. Others have different goals with their blogs. A blog is not a blog is not a blog. And I don’t hear anyone complaining about the reporting standards on the Dogblog or my friend Kingrat’s Pie Night Announcements. Can’t we all just get along, and have fun in Blog-O-Land?

One thing is definitely true: sites like digg.com, techmeme.com, technorati.com and many more have made it increasingly easy to know exactly what’s going on. What the ‘buzz is’ so to speak. Sorry, I forgot, we call them ‘memes’ now.

Now let me get completely defensive here for a moment, if I may. If you think the web is a place just infested with bad writing, bad reporting and sheepish behaviour, well, you probably spend way too much time scouring these meme-sites for interesting stories to write about. It’s probably time to weed out your feed reader. Winer, are you listening? 1997 Isn’t coming back. It’s like my dad used to say about the television: ‘it has an off button you know’.

So tell me: are you sick and tired of the same old stories over and over again?

Almost the entire staff of SNL got fired. This is really crazy, but it could be awesome for us - the consumer. It could end up being the start of an Internet Comedy Explosion. Or something to that effect.

To illustrate: there used to be this TV channel called TechTV. It was doing pretty well and had some interesting talent. Then Viacom decided to ditch 90 percent of the shows and lay off pretty much everyone. Then: Twit network, Diggnation, Revision3 all happened and I’m sure some more I don’t know about.

So I’m hoping these fired comedic writers will wake up and smell the Internet Comedy. That could be pretty exciting. Here’s hoping anyways.

STRIKEBOUND ‘SNL’ SWINGS AX: “N its first dramatic move since the beginning of the Writers Guild strike, NBC has fired ‘nearly the entire production staff’ of its struggling, late-night staple, ‘Saturday Night Live,’ sources told Page Six.

One tipster told us, ‘ ‘SNL’ laid off all their staff until further notice. Their production staff, even long-term employees, were let go.’ Another source confirmed that ‘90 percent of the ‘SNL’ staff was fired.’”