Fail rate

No real surprise here: 95% of all blogs wither and die. Their proprietors, realizing that it's easier to use Facebook or Twitter to communicate to friends, or that Internet jillions aren't coming their way, give up on them. I've come across these ghost blogs on various searches; I like the ones that say "I'll be back soon"...and the last entry dates to 2005.

The ones that tend to make it, to the extent that any blog "makes it" in a sea of bits and bytes, are those run by professionals, who know about content, deadlines, and news-gathering. Or do they? I've rarely been as depressed as when I read this, confirming what I fear, that rumor-mongering has replaced journalism in certain sectors, and that no one really gives a damn. It's all about "involving the reader in the process," and maybe, just maybe, getting it right in the very end, after it's passed through several spins of the news cycle. “Getting it right is expensive,” says one of these upstarts. “Getting it first is cheap.” A hateful, contemptuous attitude. May more blogs that subscribe to such a philosophy crash and burn.