Vlogolalia
In an ideal world, I'd happily give up 75 of the 80 cable channels currently streaming into my home (which is, you know, everything but a couple of sports networks and the station that shows Elimidate) for a few smart vlogs. But that's really a comment on the sad state of television.
I want TV to be more like weblogs--short, funny, quirky, smart, interactive, casual, personal. My first impression of vlogging is that it makes weblogs more like TV--as Beato says "from a distance you can't tell the difference."
I used to work with a fellow--let's call him Gerry Todd--who was a veteran of TV news. Gerry saw the web as a video-delivery platform, and no website was truly "sexy" in his eyes until it had streaming video. Sort of like stiletto heels on a hooker.
I admire Jeff Jarvis's pioneering vlogs, but I wonder if he (like my man Gerry) isn't trying to shape the web, or the blogging form, into something he's more comfortable with. An illustrative quote from Mr. Jarvis:
Vlogging lets us online go up against our true competitors -- not news organizations and reporters but commentators, especially on TV (on Sunday morning, on Fox, on 60 Minutes). Bloggers compete with columnists; vloggers compete with pundits.
Sure, it's true that the "blogosphere" superficially resembles the incestuous clusterfuck of the political pundit circuit. And yes, it's also true that hardly anyone in the general public reads blogs just like hardly anyone watches Meet The Press. But bloggers, generally, more or less, converse and share while pundits merely bleat (and bleat more loudly when someone else is talking).
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, bloggers who don't come from the media probably don't feel the competition that Jarvis mentions, nor do they feel the need (which, I think, Jarvis implies) to have their blogs legitimized by being perceived as competition to traditional media.
Which is to say, I would probably watch intelligent, personal vlogs. But I've no interest in wannabe punditry--vlog or otherwise--and one of the reasons I return to the "blogosphere" is that it tends promote talking with over talking at.
(Finally, for my money HipTop Nation and trackback (here's a great example) are far more interesting and important than vlogging. Although vlogging has better buzzword potential.)
