Rise of the Tablog, Decline of the Weblog

The blog format has devolved. Once a simple gateway to self-publishing, today the blog format is responsible for a thousand tawdry tablogs: hideous half-breeds of tabloid and blog built around odious content, cluttered site designs, and optimised for pageviews alone.

Nick Cernis

Amen. Nick concludes that we should abandon the weblog format altogether, replacing it with post-weblog services (Posterous, Tumblr et al.), social networks and specialised websites.

I don’t agree that the weblog format should be put out of its misery because it has been misused and debased, any more than I think painting ought to be outlawed because Jack Vettriano or Thomas Kincaid commit their atrocities on canvas.

But–since portions of Nick’s weblog post article read almost as a call to arms–I wonder if it’s time for a Dogme ‘95-like manifesto for good old-fashioned anti-‘tablog’ webloggers?

Perhaps I’ll write one.