"Blogged to Death" by the First Amendment

Author Steve Almond bloviates about newspapers and blogs in today’s Boston Globe Op Ed page in a column entitled “Blogged to Death”:

IT'S ALWAYS kind of embarrassing to see an elderly relative shaking her booty on the dance floor at a wedding reception. That's a little how I felt when I discovered that The New York Times - the Old Gray Lady of the fourth estate - now has 33 blogs….There's nothing surprising in all this. Blogs are cheap and easy. They're like those cable TV shows with all the talking heads shouting at one another. All you need is the means to broadcast and an opinionator. (The Times, naturally, has a blog called The Opinionator.) There's no real overhead, no editor, and more often than not, no reflection….blogging does have a tendency to elicit the worst in people. How could it not? It's a medium that basically allows everyone to become an instant pundit. Forget research or reasoned analysis or nuance. Forget job qualifications. Heck, forget the byline. In the blog game, it's all about making the sort of witty snap judgments that will draw the most site traffic (read: ad revenue).

Is that damnable first amendment and the practice of free speech getting under your skin, Steve? It can bring out the worst in people? Then take a vacation from it in North Korea. But be sure to bring your own food.

Not to mention, of course, that sometimes bloggers may note political fashion statements that are reported as fact in newspapers like the New York Times.

UPDATE: The Boston Globe byline for Steve Almond say only “Steve Almond is author of the new essay collection "(Not That You Asked)." But Wikipedia has more details:

He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter…He has been writing fiction for the last eight years [Maybe the last 15 years? – Ed]. …He served as adjunct professor in creative writing at Boston College for five years until publishing an open letter of resignation in the Boston Globe on May 12, 2006, in which he explained that his resignation was intended to protest the selection of Condoleezza Rice as the college's 2006 commencement guest speaker.