Over two decades ago, you could easily find articles mocking bloggers, describing them as un-credentialed, word-crazy, undisciplined people writing trivial, untrustworthy postings, usually for a tiny readership. Occasionally journalists would see a virtue in the self-directed voice of a blogger who saw something, preserved it in thoughtful language, and shared this resource for free with anyone who happened by. Occasionally journalists would acknowledge the small topic-focused enclaves some bloggers created together.
I suppose some journalists said to themselves, "My Sunday column reaches thousands and this blogger reaches dozens. No reach means, in the long run, no significance. And most of the bloggers don't keep at it. No staying power, in the long run, means no significance."
There was a lesson in those small enclaves of shared-topic bloggers, though. By affiliating with others, they created not just their individual posts but also a public conversation on their topic. They shared information and ideas. They sometimes refined information and ideas together.
Successful activism requires affiliation — historical episodes make this very clear. Rosa Parks was successful not only because she was fed up, was brave, but also because she was part of a network gathering resources and allies and preparing for public activism.
So the mockery of bloggers back in the day may have been to some degree right. To the degree that the individual writers thought about publishing and building audience but not about affiliation for doing shared work, and to the degree the blogging software didn't seem to include tools that encouraged affiliation, well, to that degree blogging culture created itself on a design without reach and staying power.
The mockery was ugly, mean-spirited, and short-sighted. The urge to think and write and share what we've seen was honorable. The isolation inherent in the model so many bloggers followed put many at a great disadvantage, if we believe, as history teaches us, that public speech and activism without skillful affiliation are doomed, as far as the wider society is concerned, to insignificance. But the missing element might not forever be out of our reach.