Blogs make media more personal

Personality is a key reason why blogs will continue to gain readers. Consider this:

Media was institutional. Now it is personal.
By personalizing media, I don’t mean customizing it (My Yahoo, Your Yahoo, All God’s Children Got Yahoos).
I mean humanizing it, taking on the personalities of people, not of institutions. Consider:
: The success of FoxNews can be attributed to the rise of the personalities and opinions of its anchors…People magazine personalized all news, for now every story has a People angle. I was at the magazine at this tipping point. Once was, a big TV show on the cover yielded big sales. That ended with the remote control and its revolution of choice. The institution — the show — no longer mattered. Now what sold was the event in the star’s life. It was personal. And soon, it wasn’t just entertainment but news of any sort that got that treatment in People and everywhere. News was personal.

Reality TV is a similar phenomenon. For the full opinion, with links, read here.

Many people love the idea of getting their news from Glenn Reynolds as a filter, with his personal commentary, rather than looking to an institutional filter. We all want celebrities or authorities of one kind or another, and blogs help to fill this demand.