DLTQ.org

Slightly over my level of discussion or comprehension about the nature and possible futures of the blogging world, Ross Mayfield discusses blogging as media outlets for the "powerful people, or people power".

While we should celebrate both forms as participation at scale we haven’t had before, we should recognize that these forms will converge.  They both involve human editing of a sort.  Aggregation is vertical information assembly where the editor codes.  Citizen’s media is horizontal information assembly where the editor, made even more clear in the Wikinews model that appends a more formal editorial process to the end of emergent practice.  The two will work in tandem.

This story just led my thoughts back to Balkan. I was in Serbia and Bosnia last month in connection with a seminar I co-organized on Education and Democracy in the West Balkans. The discussion areas — well, I will make a separate post on that seminar later on. In either case, while in Zajecar in eastern Serbia, I had a discussion with a guy, and that discussion really helped me understand some of the Major problems in the country. One of them is the lack of Real free media. Or, to put it more correctly: The lack of variety in independent media.

I wrote an article on that very point but somehow I cannot find the article in my outbox at the moment. I will edit this post later on, with a link to the article. While in Sarajevo during the seminar proper, I asked Mr. Rusmir Mahmutčehajić about his opinion regarding the independent media in Bosnia, and he basically said that there is none. All the media outlets are advocating some religious, economic or ethnical group. I will research this further and possibly contact Mr. Mahmutčehajić again by e-mail and ask for further comments.