Billmon at large

Apparently, he's not dead, although Whiskey Bar has been lifeless for some time. This LA Times article yesterday about blogging, written by Billmon, has a byline attributed to him with his Whiskey Bar address, so maybe he'll get back to posting there now that the Times article is online.

[T]he media's infatuation has a distinct odor of the deathbed about it — not for the blogosphere, which has a commercially bright future, but for the idea of blogging as a grass-roots challenge to the increasingly sanitized "content" peddled by the Time Warner-Capital Cities-Disney-General Electric-Viacom-Tribune media oligopoly.

...I've watched the commercialization of this culture of dissent with growing unease. When I recently decided to take a long break from blogging, it was for a mix of personal and philosophical reasons. But the direction the blogosphere is going makes me wonder whether I'll ever go back.

...Even as it collectively achieves celebrity status for its anti-establishment views, blogging is already being domesticated by its success. What began as a spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise.

In the process, a charmed circle of bloggers — those glib enough and ideologically safe enough to fit within the conventional media punditocracy — is gaining larger audiences and greater influence. But the passion and energy that made blogging such a potent alternative to the corporate-owned media are in danger of being lost, or driven back to the outer fringes of the Internet.

Even as I type....the Whiskey Bar is open - no comment yet, only a graphic. Maybe he won't go back. That will be our loss. I understand getting tired, moving on, that sort of thing. I don't understand being unhappy about the state of the blogosphere and quitting because of that. Or maybe I do. Maybe that's the same way I feel about the United States of America these days. In that case, I would conclude that Billmon has accepted his own identity as a blogger to be defined by the blogosphere. I don't think that's necessary. So, Billmon, here's my advice: if you like to write and the blogging style allows you to write as you wish, get back to the blog. There's nothing wrong with being on the outer fringes of anything. It's where the best people hang out.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.