Blogs and Podcasts

I am considering a podcast.  A friend from seminary ^[1] usually greets me with one word: podcast. So I’m considering it. I have the first edition scratched out and want to have the first year outlined before I go to step two. It would be fun but it is a lot of work too.

Obviously, I’m a blogger. You’re currently reading my blog.

So why the title of this post? Because I just listened to one of my favorite podcasts and at the end there was a plug for voting for it in some competition. It hit me at that point. Many blogs and podcasts have become commercial enterprises. Voting for a blog or a podcast seems like giving your buddy props (and in some cases it is) but really the big winners are commercial site, not po-dunk ones like mine. Notice that I don’t have any advertisements on this site? Support for this comes out of my pocket.

So what? Or “duh”. Yea, I know, it seems like I’m slow to catch on. But the issue is that what used to be a Web 2.0 kind of thing got taken over by commercial operations. I’m part of the “problem” since I read Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com about 50 times a day and listen to the Grammar Girl podcast. So how do we fish through the professional podcast and blogs to get to normal people? Do we want to or need to? Do regular chumps like me simply regurgitate the links promoted on the commercial sites?

I don’t know. I’m not sure. I know that I write on things that I think about. On the left side of the blog I have an “Other Reading” list of links I find interesting. I guess the way to connect to personal sites rather than commercial ones are what could almost jokingly be called the “traditional” method: links from sites you know. I get a lot of hits from my sending church ^[2], Steve ^[3], and Tom ^[4]. People sometimes find me by Google searches. I know I’m rather picky about outgoing links.

And to be honest, professional writers should be writers who are good enough to make people want to read them. I have no delusions of being as good a blogger as Doug Wilson or as successful a podcaster as John Piper (not that either one are a problem, just that they’re better than I). But I think we must be aware that there are professional bloggers out there. The very soul of blogging has changed from the early days. ¹I’ve been blogging in one form or another since April 12, 2002 and I’m fairly new to it. Blogging used to be a grassroots thing and has grown into a somewhat less regulated media outlet.

AND? And nothing. But just be aware that when you vote for professional podcasts or blogs you’re really helping their bottom line. The more successful they are the more they can charge advertisers. And it isn’t just hit counts that matter, these kinds of ‘awards’ help too. Think of the internet as your mail box. The professional blogs and podcasts are catalogs and the personal ones like mine are a hand written letter from a friend.

Sincerely,
Tim Etherington