Back in the 50s Newton Minnow, who was the chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission,  made a his famous comment about "talking heads"
on television.  He was rather disparaging of the format. Even before
television print and radio were full of people sharing their knowledge and
opinions. In fact the modern word pundit comes from the Hindi word pandit
meaning imparter of knowledge.
I have always believed that there is nothing wrong with a talking head. The
issue is not the media. The issue is the message. It is what this person
saying that matters. (Thank all of you Marshall McLuhan adherents very much
but the *medium is not the message.* )
Print media and today even broadcast media are by definition not up to the
minute. This in part is because they need to put the substance in a
palatable form. It is also in part because they have financial obligations
and therefore need to think twice before they say anything. Bloggers have
the advantage of speed.
Is that such a great advantage? Isn't what the Blogger blogs more important.
It always gets back to the same issue. Is this work worth reading, hearing
or seeing. For that matter the question can be asked was this work worth
creating.
A number of years ago Eugene wrote a piece about what he called "Cheap
Speech." (I assume it is still available on the ADAGER website.) If I recall
the point of it was that in the future it will be more difficult to suppress
ideas, works of art or music because inexpensive media such as the web and
digital technologies both audio and visual. I am all for the easy
dissemination of knowledge.
The problem is that the best place to hide is out in the open. We are
already inundated with reports, facts, eye-witness accounts and opinions.
Every person with a cell phone or video camera can become a reporter. Every
person with a keyboard can become an op-ed writer. The fact that a trained
reporter is a trained observer eludes the purveyors of the new reportage.
Once upon a time we were only concerned with the opinions of knowledgeable
people. We can no longer find the needle of knowledge in the haystack of
information.
Here is to substance over form.

The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my
employer.
Yosef Rosenblatt

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