Do Blogs Offer Value? Or, R They Just Marketing Messages?

There’s a healthy discussion over on Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch following Bob Ambrogi’s post “The Demise of the Legal Blogsphere.” The centerpiece of the discussion is a blog post by Mike Cernovich at the blog Crime & Federalism who believes the legal blogsphere has gone to pot.

Cover your ears and guard your hearts, my marketing friends, because Cernovich sums it up by blaming YOU!

He says:

“The modern legal blogosphere sucks because it’s been overrun by legal marketers, and because people who might be able to engage in actually-interesting conversations are too busy sucking up to their e-friends and e-colleagues.”

Mike Cernovich seems to think that the legal blogsphere has gone to pot. No, he’s not suggesting that legal bloggers want to legalize marijuana to solve the California deficit, rather, blogging is being “overrun by shallow marketing and exclusive cliques.”

Curiously, Ambrogi thinks he makes some good points, so you might want to link over there and ponder his thoughts and contribute to the conversation.

Cernovich’s post feeds off of the perspective of   11D, which offers an unflattering assessment of legal bloggers who, “have undermined the blogosphere and that both bloggers and readers are burned out.”

I admit that a recent browse through of Alltop’s Legal Category did turn up some pretty marginal, watered-down, self-serving and even lame stuff, yet, I’m not ready to concede the value of the blogsphere, both legal and otherwise.

It’s easy to dismiss the blogs that are blatantly pitching to the marketplace, so that’s a non-issue in my opinion.

The beauty that bloggers provide to my life is that I get to pick, specifically, what I want to feed my brain every day. Yes, there’s a multitude of choices, but I’m working through it and better for it. In fact, I’m publishing my own daily newspaper via Feedly. Using the Feedly tool, a magazine like dashboard/start page, I no longer need to subscribe to a ton of newspapers, thus reducing my carbon footprint. Actually, I quit my subscriptions not to save the environment, but to exercise my freedom of choice. I no longer have to depend on the Chief Editor of the New York Times, Miami Herald, or Wall Street Journal to decide what I should be reading, and what journalists I should trust  every morning while enjoying my café con leche.

Using Feedly, I’ve created a newspaper like experience that feeds the content of my favorite citizen journalists along side of mainstream media reporting. I aggregate business, personal interest, politics, health, technology, finance, entertainment, shopping, and social news drawing from blogs, newspapers and social network status updates (that usually include great links to articles that my friends and colleagues are reading). I like that I receive content from relevant and reliable sources. I read material from thought leaders in my industry, content from contrarians, artists and humorists. Feedly also suggests related content based on the RSS feeds I subscribe to. This is exactly what the Huffington Post publishes, only mine is better.

Bottom line, I look forward to finding new bloggers or old bloggers with new blogs to follow. I benefit from having real time chatter via my Twitter, Facebook, JD Supra and Linkedin networks served up each morning in my personal newspaper, along with a good morning Twitter world from @nancymyrland and, of course, my café con leche.

Blogging is evolving perfectly for me, thanks to advances in aggregation tools. I say, long live blogging. What do you say? Are the blogs you’re developing for your attorneys and law firms too heavy on marketing or are they contributing to the information stew? How are they making a difference?

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