Comments on: ScienceBlogs and “National Geographic” — A Partnership of Online Strengths http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/12/07/scienceblogs-goes-mainstream-in-partnership-with-national-geographic/ What's Hot & What's Cooking in Scholarly Publishing - from the Society for Scholarly Publishing Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:25:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Kent Anderson http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/12/07/scienceblogs-goes-mainstream-in-partnership-with-national-geographic/#comment-5932 Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:54:51 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=7252#comment-5932 Phil, I see how I miscommunicated this. I think your point is exactly what I had in mind, in that the medium itself used to be completely conflated with the message, so if you said “blog,” the content was dismissed. Now, calling something a “blog” doesn’t dismiss the content because serious people blog these days (and have for years). So, thanks for the clarification!

I will add that confusing the medium with the message is a time-honored tradition. The two posts today were complementary in my mind — one about how an online source was gaining legitimacy, profitability, and scope, while the newspapers were trying to return to their publisher-centric model, when the medium not only overshadowed the message but also created the business model. Shifting media for news outlets has led to disruption both around message (who controls it) and business model (who is at the center of it).

]]> By: Philip Davis http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/12/07/scienceblogs-goes-mainstream-in-partnership-with-national-geographic/#comment-5929 Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:14:39 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=7252#comment-5929 Kent wrote:
Blogs, once dismissed as vitriolic noise of self-involved hacks, have become a mainstay of written communication and powerful, web-native content management platforms.

Kent, you may be confusing the medium with the message here. Blogs are still a viable conduit of vitriolic noise from self-involved hacks, although a handful of mindful publishers have created a space for serious, carefully filtered and edited, professional communication.

In science communication, the medium is far less important than the message.

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