A blog is a Web site with regularly updated chronological entries containing commentary, opinions, lies, rumors, half-truths and innuendos. More importantly, it’s where you can express your opinions, make comments, spread rumors, tell lies, create fiction and bore the world with your thoughts on just about any subject.

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In a lot of ways, reading a blog is like reading someone else’s diary or, better yet, an old Larry King column. Free flow. No continuity. No boring segues or transitions. No holds barred. And in most cases, shallow. Shallow is good — there’s nothing wrong with shallow.

But there is one major difference. Even Larry King had to get his copy past an editor. And what an editor he must have been.

But bloggers do not face this roadblock. They can run their mouths forever and ever. There is no word or space limitation in the Blogosphere. But some bloggers have been hammered by fellow bloggers for their stupid blog posts and have subsequently and sadly developed severe blogophobia, or fear of blogs. —Angus Lind
—Much ado about nothing: Web logs are everywhere and full of nothing  (Times-Picayune)

A member of the writing establishment, whose position in the world of print is threatened by the expansion of blogging, misses an important point about blogging. What Lind smirkingly calls “blogophobia” is the subsitute for the editors and gate-keepers, the absence of which he laments in the blogosphere. Thus, it’s not just that anyone with a web page can be a writer, but anyone can also be an editor and critic. Some will be more informed than others, but it’s not hard to read blogrolls to figure out who the most respected bloggers are in whatever niche that interests you.

While there are probably millions of teen angst blogs out there, and while few of them are probably good reads for an outside audience, nobody is forcing Lind or anyone else to read stuff that’s boring. I have some sympathy for those who feel Google is swamped with commentary from crazed bloggers, but Google does offer a “News” search feature that restricts itself to news publications, and anyone who knows a tiny bit about searching can add “-blog -weblog” to a Google search.

I also think Lind does a disservice to his readers by presenting content from “The Dullest Blog in the World” in order to support his claim that blogs can be dull.

Via Doctor Daisy, who offers a rebuttal to Lind.