Adam Clayton Powell interviews John Markoff

Christopher L. Filkins

Q: Well, you've touched on a really central concern of a lot of people—over the last 10 years, if not longer - particularly among journalists who, I guess you could say, are more traditional, who look ahead and see all these pitfalls that are coming—of people who suddenly start creating content who don't have the same standards as, well, The New York Times. Do you see that as an issue or are we beyond that now?

JM: Well, I'm of two minds. I certainly can see that scenario, where all these new technologies may only be good enough to destroy all the old standards but not create something better to replace them with. I think that's certainly one scenario. The other possibility right now—it sometimes seems we have a world full of bloggers and that blogging is the future of journalism, or at least that's what the bloggers argue, and to my mind, it's not clear yet whether blogging is anything more than CB radio.

Since CB radio and blogs have different utility I'm not sure such a comparison is either fair or even rational. CB radio serves an important function and while it certainly doesn't serve more than as a cliche for the major media, having only become a fad for a short time in the 70s, surely it is a vital and important technology for those who rely upon it. As a communication medium on the highways of America it can't be beat. While the day is approaching when cell phone technology will allow communication in desolate stretches of highway cell phones are only good for one to one communication. The broadcast function of CB makes it ideal for communication among strangers on the road in much the same way that blogs afford communication among strangers on the net with the dispersal of links outward from a particularly popular entry be roughly equivalent to broadcast.

Markoff seems to be disparaging CB radio in this comment. He sounds rather uninformed to me.