When a new blawg or legal website comes online, there’s often a bit of a splash. Emails go out announcing its existence, perhaps even “requesting” a link exchange or at least a look-see. A new link in a blogroll appears on technorati, albeit three date late and partially obscured. Something to let us know it exists.
But death happens silently.
Yesterday, I received an email from Turk, asking what happened to Judicial Reports. The URL was dead. Gone. Disappeared. As I’ve written some editorials for Judicial Reports, maybe I knew something about this gaping hole in the blawgosphere. I didn’t. It came as a shock to me as well.
I sent an email to Dirk Olin, honcho of Judicial Reports, to find out what happened. He has a couple of email addresses, and I sent my query to both. One came back undeliverable, a bad sign. I have no yet received a response to the other, and I don’t know if I will. My hope is that he’s started some new, great, monster project and I just don’t know about it yet. But the fact that there’s no Judicial Reports page anymore, with some announcement of impending greatness, makes that seem unlikely.
In the nearly two years that Simple Justice has existed, I’ve seen a good number of blawgs come and go. Some deserved to. Others didn’t. Some blawgers burn out quickly, when they realize that keeping this going isn’t nearly as easy as it looks. They wake up one morning and just can’t bring themselves to write another post. They unceremoniously shut the doors and disappear from view.
Some blawgers learn that all the hyperbolic claims of new media, networking, business development, all the marketing lingo that those who have hitched their financial wagon to the internet like to use to make inchoate blawgers believe that the next million dollar fee is right around the digital corner, are whisps of smoke.
Judicial Reports was a business venture. It had a paid staff to cover the New York courts. As with all business ventures with paid employees, it had to earn sufficient revenues to maintain its existence. I can only surmise that it did not do well enough to continue, absent any additional information that would change the equation.
Does this foretell anything about the future of the blawgosphere? Up to now, its “profitability” has largely proven to work far better for those marketing marketing than those who consume the marketers’ product. But as the relative mix of supply and demand changes, as it invariably will, even the marketers will see diminishing returns. Lawyers are invariably late to the new technology party, being stuck in our love of stare decisis, but we eventually figure it out. The cheerleaders can keep us enthused for a while, but the money and effort put into the blawgosphere will do to us what it’s done to Judicial Reports. Eventually, we will realize that the ROI isn’t there and move on.
What this means for the blawgosphere in the long run is unclear. Perhaps it’s a fad that’s beginning to run its course. That twitter, for better or worse, has captured the imagination of many of the blawgospheric cheerleaders may signal another shift in the paradigm, where the smart new “thought leaders” (a term I despise) are shifting their focus to the latest and greatest. The masses will follow, until they get bored.
I see that many of the people who used to write comments here are now commenting about posts on twitter, and no longer bothering to comment on the blawg itself. That strikes me as a consequential shift. Twitter may be the new toy for many, but its has no depth. Has our attention span run the gamut from books to articles to blawg posts and now to 140 characters or less? Maybe. It’s much easier to post something on twitter than a blawg. And twitter links to blog posts remind me of blog post links to newspaper stories. See the trend?
I’m very sorry to see Judicial Reports disappear. Not only did I enjoy reading it, but I liked receiving the checks for my editorials. Is the day coming that no one reads Simple Justice anymore because it’s old new media? Probably. If so, I’ll be back in the position I was on day 1, when I wrote for my own amusement and was alone in the room. For others, perhaps the ultimate resolution will be the next-generation of “twit” limited to two characters: Hi
Update: For anyone who doubts that things change, this is the most painful example I’ve ever seen. Watch at your own risk.
H/T Diane Levin.
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I’m sorry, did you say something?
I do so enjoy your efforts at humor. The depth of your sarcasm is often masked by its pedestrian delivery, a delightful combination.
Well, we are the fast food of print.
Maybe just the dollar menu, but without the dollar.
To paraphrase and abuse Sir Winston Churchill… I can only offer blood, toil, sweat and tears… and this:
“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in the blawgosphere, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our blawgs, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe,the blawgosphere or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our imaginations beyond the seas, armed and guarded by our independence of thought and being , would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New Blawgosphere, shorn of Twitter, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
A wise Brit once reminded us of the old latin maxim, “If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.” And so we shall.
When CharonQC writes, I feel I have to stand and take my hat off
Twitter serves as a nice combination of feed reader, text messenger, and Facebook without the creepy “that’s getting a little too personal” bells and whistles. Ultimately I’m not sure it does much more.
Anyone who ever got into blogging with the idea of making money is about as realistic as a kid who forgoes education for a shot at a sports career.
So you’re saying what? My dreams of an NFC career should give way to a KFC career?
I wouldn’t go that far. Can you bag groceries? It didn’t hurt Warner’s career.
Silent Death in the Blawgosphere (Critical Update)
Bookmarked your post over at Blog Bookmarker.com!
The URL isn’t dead for me, the site loads. Unfortunately there hasn’t been an update since Dec 30 2008 and both sidebars on the blog are bringing up errors, so it doesn’t look good.
I’m getting the same now, though it was dead earlier. Maybe the rumor of its demise is premature?
Are you telling me I read through all this blarney AND listened to that YouTube video, just to discover that Scott needs a better fact-checker, and much more reliable sources?
Maybe I should switch to Twitter for all my really important news.
Now, now, professor. We live in a fast-changing world, and when things change during the course of the day, we need to keep abreast of them. Nothing would make me happier than to learn that Judicial Reports initial disappearance, and subsequent reemergence (which is still a broken webpage at this moment), is still alive and only suffering technical problems. Should it turn out to be the case, I will be report it, and be thrilled to learn that it remains a vibrant part of the blawgosphere.
And since when are you up so late?
I know (well, assume) you went to law school, Scott, but since when does “factual inaccuracy” equal “fast-changing”?
As for my nocturnal habits: The Yabuts were up late watching “24” (we don’t have TiVo so couldn’t time-shift) and were just too excited to get to sleep right away. But, that reminds me: Why the heck is the Simple Justice comments section on San Juan Time?
Ah, my dear professor. Realizing that you have a stranglehold on the Green Giant Chair at the Harvard School of Animal Husbandry, it would be my pleasure, no, honor, to explain. Something can be factual precise at a given moment, but subsequent intervening events result in a change. It does not mean that there was any factual inaccuracy at the time something was stated, but that there is change in circumstances in the interim.
Knowing how you aggie profs love examples, allow me to add to your comfort level. Let us assume, for the moment, that you were awake when you wrote your comment. An hour later, you might well be asleep. Yet being asleep later does not make it factually inaccurate that you were awake earlier. If you were to assert, in the writing of your comment, that you are awake, it is absolutely accurate even though you may be asleep when I read the comment. The same can be said of the four stomaches of a cow, but I will save that for another day.
And why do you have a problem with San Juan time? It’s a lovely place, with far better weather than Schenectady.
Methinks the lawyer doth protest waaaaaaaay too much.
Unless someone else writes your headlines and content, it seems that you said the weblog was dead (not lost, or misplaced, or temporarily offline, nor unavailable from your computer), based on much too little information. However, being really new to the internet and blawgiverse, I guess you deserve a pass on this one.
As far as when Prof. Yabut is sleeping, I suggest you not take Turk’s word that I was actually asleep during naptime. Often my eyes are closed (and I fake a little snore) only to fool people arriving with To Do Lists.
And, I love San Juan.
But my dear professor, any protest is too much for you. Allow me to explain again, this time with smaller words. At the time the post was written is was, most assuredly, dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead. Dead. It may well still be dead again. Or, it may be subsequently resurrected. Or not. The URL was dead. The email to the URL was kicked back as undeliverable. The pulse, the brain, the whole body, was definitely dead.
But websites are not people (nor Messiahs, for those so inclined). They can be resurrected, as we have learned from the thrice dead Norm “I’m not dead, I’m only sleeping” Pattis. Keynes once said, “When the facts change, I change my mind.” Who am I to ignore Keynes?
I have made inquiry of San Juan, and am informed that you have yet to show any love. Please be cautious about such hyperbole. San Juan has its eye on you now.