Update II (12/20): Some truth, much exaggeration…and a bit of blog envy? More on media bashing.
Update (12/19): Fellow Examiner Blog Board of Contributors blogger Dan Gillmor on “Citizen media is shifting power back to the people.”
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AND YOU, TOO, bloggers, blog readers, Wikipedians, YouTube-ers, and everyone else who contributes to and consumes a growing pile of information — user-generated content — on the web. 
It’s a gimmick, but I’ll bite.
Every year TIME magazine chooses a “Person of the Year” and highlights whatever “good works” he/she has done. In 2004, TIME did something radical when it chose Power Line as “Blog of the Year” after bloggers, led by Power Line poked holes in CBS’s flimsy story about George Bush’s National Guard service. Rathergate, in my opinion, still is the most significant moment in blogosphere history as we watched the veneer of mainstream media’s “objectivity” crack and crumble to the ground.
To its credit, CBS posted my review of An Army of Davids, with criticism against the network intact. (Also see The Blogging Panel was…, and the Rathergate and Easongate categories)
Two years later, TIME has gone a step farther. I am “Person of the Year” because of this blog and my all-consuming focus on developing it, promoting it and my work, and collaborating with you the reader to make an impact on the world and influence people. You are “Person of the Year” because you go online to read it and e-mail links to other people. You the reader and/or commenter and/or blogger — each of us is Person of the Year because of the parts we play in a bold new mission.
To call the web, and blogging in particular, revolutionary is not an overstatement. Never before have individuals had such power to disseminate news and opinion. Finding news and reporting or commented on it is one thing, but without the means to get it out to the masses, it was like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it.
The world wide web and the self-publishing tools it spawned have empowered individuals in ways similar to the Protestant Reformation. Cheap (relatively speaking) computers and broadband Internet capabilities have leveled the playing field of amateurs and professionals considerably. Traditional media companies still are powerful, but we saw that power erode over the last few years, thanks to ordinary people like you and me.
Journalists read blogs. They may not admit it, but they do. They pay attention. They use blogs as sources without citing them. Journalists who used to hate blogs are now blogging.
I am biased because I’m a blogger, but the revolution is not limited to blogs. For example, what’s happening with YouTube is astounding. What began as a site for regular folks to upload silly home videos has become a place to generate word-of-mouth advertising, job hunt, promote your band, your work, yourself. Television networks and film makers upload previews for user feedback. People upload banned videos and other “controversial” clips. Yes, there are copyright issues, but uploading is unstoppable, and big media are finally realizing that YouTube actually can help them. (See YouTube on Wikipedia)
The information reformation has flourished in part because government has kept out of the way. From the TIME cover story:
Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.
The current level of productivity and innovation on the web is possible because of government non-interference. The web has evolved and grown because it isn’t regulated. In a pure libertarian sense, the government’s job is to simply “preserve the rules of the game by enforcing contracts, preventing coercion, and keeping markets free,” not control or reign in the development of businesses and ideas. People are allowed to stretch the boundaries of their abilities and energy and create and share content (text, images, music) and “open source” software that other like-minded individuals can add to and improve on. WordPress, the program that runs this blog, is one such program.
(Will government remain out of the way? With politicians threatening to write laws that place burdens and retraints on blogs and other social media that may curtail freedom of speech and “net neutrality,” the government is itching to control the web, which will stifle innovation and growth, just as it has in other industries.)
I called the TIME story a gimmick because we bloggers have known for years that what we have the power to do is the real news. Echoing the sentiments of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, media blogger Jeff Jarvis says that “person of the year” stories are relics from the “mass era” anyway.
The era of “hits” was a product of market scarcity. Because it costs money to store records and CDs and broadcast TV shows, sellers allowed only the most profitable to occupy shelves and airwaves. But the web has ushered in the niche-market era. The mass market still exists, but it no longer dominates the way it used to.
Supply is no longer limited to what sellers can afford to store or display or what manufacturers can afford to make and deliver. A medium like blogs, for instance, and commerce sites like
