Blogging - Fad?

Is blogging a fad?

One way to distinguish a fad from a trend is to ask what would happen if you reversed the order in which technologies were invented. For example, suppose that we had all of the highly-touted electronic technologies for distance learning, and then someone came along and invented the book. My guess is that the book would be greeted as a technological marvel--easy to hold, convenient to carry, outstanding resolution, and so forth. This thought experiment leads me to suspect that electronic distance learning is a fad.

[emphasis mine] . . . .

From the standpoint of pure efficiency of disseminating information, it is not clear to me that the mass media model beats a blog-based model. However, I believe that many people consume news for entertainment value, and the mass media seem better suited at presenting news as entertainment.

My prediction is that in niches where the ratio of information value to entertainment value is high, blogs will prove to be superior mechanism for disseminating news. For example, local politics tends to have lower entertainment value than national politics. To me, that implies that at some point we will start to see elections for school board or city council influenced more by coverage in blogs than by coverage in newspapers.

Hat tip, Marginal Revolution.

Maybe that's my niche - I should cover the next school board elections.