The Contest

Everything in my last post plays into my reaction earlier today to the Spring for Music contest: evidently that organization is also trying to figure out what to do with us. If you can have a contest to choose the best of something - complete with voting! and campaigns! - you're not treating culture bloggers like professionals or as legitimate members of the media. You're treating us like we're...well, what? Amateurs trying to break into the big time, where only one will be good enough to win? You're treating us like we're contestants, in a contest where the general public's opinion is getting a whole lot of weight.

That's a popularity contest. Yeah, there's a distinguished panel of judges, but so? What's the point of putting us in competition with each other?

What's the point of putting 200 music bloggers, 100 food bloggers, and an unknown number of film bloggers in the same category ("culture bloggers")?

It's just not an effective way to call attention to blogs or the best of the blogosphere. There are thousands of interesting, talented people putting up interested, well-written blog postings every day. Crowning one of them the best English-speaking culture blogger in North American is not doing blogging or the blogsophere any good.