Let's start with social networking terminology. Because groups who read blogs can be fairly insular, I'll give you a fast primer on what we call "milblogs."
A milblog is a military blog. Since techies like to play fast and loose with words, the prefix "mil" gets attached to a number of nouns like supporter, spouse, family, blog, blogger and even a verb, blogging. Out there is probably a milcat and a mildog. Fortunately, they do not type. (We do not have any association with the word mildew.) This evolution of language isn't unusual: five years ago, twitter was something young girls did when they giggled, and a tweet was a sound made by birds. But now, Twitter is what grown men do on their PDA's, and we have words such as tweet, tweetdeck, and tweetstream.
Milblogs are written by active duty soldiers, veterans, spouses, parents, and other supporters. They are diverse in opinion and tone, and cover various aspects of the military life. They offer an invaluable glimpse into the lives of soldiers, and also give us boots-on-the-ground reporting from the front line. Independent online journalists like Michael Yon embed themselves with the troops just as filmmakers do. Often their funds are raised by selling personal possessions or asking for donations. They bring us an intimate picture of the war.
These blogs are invaluable for many reasons. The first is that with the closure of news bureaus, there is a paucity of coverage in the mainstream press. Hence, milblogs become a source for news. Milblogs also allow families to stay in touch, and with soldiers writing their experiences to an unlimited worldwide audience, milblogging shows the humanity of the troops. This helps chisel away at many of the stereotypes affixed to Vietnam Veterans who were derided upon their arrival home. We can push past images like those shown to the American public in a Michael Moore movie, images like a bunch of teens driving around in a tank with heavy metal music blaring.
With milblogs, we see the heart and soul of the men and women who serve, we read their thoughts, we see the range of opinions amongst them. Milblogs can even influence opinion, as many are read daily by the brass (the top officials in the military), politicians (those people you vote into office), and even the papers (the things you used to read). They fill in what the mainstream media for a variety of reasons either misses or skips.
Article comments
1 - Greyhawk
Great article, Kanani.
2 - Deano
Another solid article Kanani! Kudos on getting "the front page".
One of the big issues I've always had with blogs is that too few of them contribute and/or develop real original content. The majority tend to be aggregators of content and merely provide a type of running commentary on the links they provide. As much as they decry traditional journalism, they often spend the majority of their time parasiting off of the work of the traditional media, while perversely disparaging the often difficult and labourious work of mainstream journalists.
One of the specific positive elements that many milblogs have brought to the table is that they often reflect a specific depth of knowledge and expertise around the situation, the operating environment, the terminology and thinking that rarely is effectively expressed in the traditional media coverage of the war, mainly because the time it would take to develop that level of comprehension or immersion is not available, however long they are "embedded".
On the negative side, I have also found that debate and discussion around issues on many milblogs tends to be truncated and abrupt, with any dissenting voices often surpressed or ridiculed. While there is some understandable resentment and irritation at the "trolling" that happens due to political partisanship, often genuine valid debates are squashed with heated rhetoric and insults. Balance is somewhat lacking.
One hopes that the terrific first-hand independent journalism can be effectively embraced and celebrated without milblogs turning into a mere navel-gazing, self-absorbed tribal community that spends its time talking to itself...hmmmm sounds like the Politics section of BC!
3 - Clavos
...a mere navel-gazing, self-absorbed tribal community that spends its time talking to itself...hmmmm sounds like the Politics section of BC!
In which, it's worth pointing out, you are a not infrequent participant, Deano.
Is your navel an innie or an outie?
4 - Deano
Actually I think I am a rather infrequent commenter, particularly compared to the daily (and hourly) commenters.
I generally don't post comments anymore as the level of engagement and quality of discussion in the last two years has sunk abysmally low. Commenters are more focused on scoring partisan points than any tangible discussion of issues and the relentless spinning and furious dancing of some commenters just gives me a headache.
As I said to STM on another thread - life's too short. Go and grab a pint and find some surf.
By the way, its an innie, point of fact.
5 - Kanani (The Kitchen Dispatch)
Thank you, Greyhawk!
Deano, I think you raise many good points. To be fair, I think insularity runs across all blogs, which for the most point push a particular POV or topic. I mean, I can think of travel tribes, fashionista tribes, writer tribes, political tribes. The difference with a "milblog tribe" is that the public very much should know what is going on because our entire future as a nation is at stake.
Since the world doesn't come to bloggers --we have to put ourselves out there. Thankfully, the brass at BC and Technorati (I called them BLOGNORATI this weekend) have expressed a desire for more mil bloggers here.
Social Media has always inspired discussion, spats, and all out attacks. Compounding this situation is the growing need to compress our writing into shorter tidbits (the 140 character tweet). Hence, the comments and even posts become less expository and more driven to make points --with or without background.
What makes Blogcritics different is that venues like this are akin to having work in a newspaper, not like a blog. On blogs we are being hard pressed make things shorter because of waning attention spans. I do think BC has its challenges as well, but that's another article (or a discussion with Lisa, Eric and Richard --hey call me).
Back to the path: it was clear the mainstream media (MSM) really didn't know much about milblogs prior to conference.
When Don Lemon sails into the Army / BlackFive lounge and claims to have "just heard" about milblogs, you know a certain insularity exists over there.
One of the big downsides of the closure of foreign bureaus is the sources they cultivated took many years between journos and locals. All of those were lost, and literally it's as if they were starting anew. Plus, remember with the MSM, the industry heaved its major collapse right when we got into these wars. Hence, they quickly ran through their pool of journos who had the expertise and soon (as Dexter Filkins pointed out), we were seeing soft news reporters being sent in to do hard news. Not to say a switch can't be made, but it takes a very long time to learn not only the nuances of a region and its culture, but also about war strategy. It also takes a long time to gain trust from both other journos and locals.
So yeah, quite frankly I see milblogging as THE most interesting and potentially relevant genre. How it will be funded is the subject of another post. But I will leave you with this thought: it will fall to interested cadres of investors to fund these individuals. The net result might not be the journalism of old that claimed to be neutral, but then again... if you look at the history of the news papers, there usually was always a conservative or a liberal bent. Such is the nature of the beast.
Aloha! Kanani
6 - kanani
Hey John... ya missed an edit. Can you change Without to within, and get rid of the extra s in the last paragraph? Ta.
7 - Phillip Winn
Kanani, it was great to meet you at BC, and also some of the other mil-bloggers to whom you introduced me!
I do think that many, many subcultures are relatively insular as far as blogging goes. Tech bloggers and political bloggers lead the way, and "mommy bloggers" aren't far behind, but I'm still surprised at how many people aren't aware of how that breaks down.
Keep up the advocacy. YOu're a great writer, and an effective advocate.
8 - Kanani
Phillip, It was fun taking you over to the "Army Lounge" and having you hook up with the person putting the beta version of Troop Tube together.
Yes, I think it's a real challenge to go beyond one's own interests with blogging. It's not like picking up a newspaper and having a bit of this and that. I do think that Political Bloggers tend to be fairly polemic.
We did discuss going out of the milblog plank next year, and getting onto the more generalized panels in addition having others come onto ours. Scott Henderson from Media Sauce (I don't know why, but when I hear sauce I just think spaghetti) came over, and he was a great advocate for us to continue posting (as we would say) "beyond the wire."
9 - Kanani
Deano,
Just reread your comment.
Don't forget ...there's military strategy, and then there's the political debate.
Often on blogs they are intertwined, but few people even really know military strategy.
I went over this last week --I don't enjoy getting into conversations with people who are coming at me from a purely political point of view. In fact, it's impossible to even speak with them because as you say, they are trying to get in their partisan points.
Hence, many of the milblogs I read --while they do have their POV, really do talk about what works and what doesn't in military strategy.
And those are the ones I learn from.