Thousands of blogs and not a drop of news

Much of the time the tech blogosphere is spoken of as being nothing but an echo chamber where there is more of an interest in being part of a Techmeme train than striking out on one’s own and risking the oblivion of posting original thoughts and opinions of what is going on in the tech world.

This is something that new bloggers especially face as part of figuring out their path forward but they are not alone in this. Even those of us that have been at it for awhile constantly have to check ourselves; or at least we should, to make sure that we are adding value to any conversations we write about. If we don’t then we confirm the point that Ethan Kaplan raises in his post today:

The ironic thing about this, is that it confirmed my original point: journalism is in a sorry state indeed. And not just mainstream journalism either, but all journalism, and the most guilty part I think are the very blogs who are supposed to be tearing down this institution.

Ethan then goes on to outline the current template that seems to be being used by an exceedingly large percentage of tech blogs in order to maximize their attention getting factor for the least amount of real news or information.

Sure we all want to be popular and a go to blog for news, information and opinion but while the TechCrunch/Mashable type template might work in the short run we would be wise to remember that our readers aren’t stupid and they get tired very quickly of being handed the same crap over and over with no added value.

Yes it is harder to do as Ethan suggests and keep giving ourselves a good hard look to make sure that we aren’t falling into the template news trap. We have to keep striving to give our readers a reason to keep coming back and that reason is never the same between blogs which is what make the whole blogosphere such a wonderful thing. So the next time you go to write a post remember what is was you do that brought you your readers in the first place and then do it better.