This is true liberty, when free-born men,

Having to advise the public, may speak free,

Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise;

Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace:

What can be juster in a state than this?

Euripides, Hicetid.

There is much commotion among the journalism establishment. There is a new phenomenon, known as the “weblog”, which some say seeks to destroy them. Rapidly, this phenomenon gains momentum. The establishment is in two camps: the modern-minded side with the weblog, and the others define themselves in opposition to it. Is there anything to fear?

If you take a gander at The Economist or The Atlantic, or a peek at The Guardian or The Times (of London or of New York), you will find them all well-served with blogs. Why should this be? Can it simply be that their editors heard of this distant phenomenon, heard that it was popular, and thought, “perhaps we should try that ourselves?” Or is it possible that blogs can serve a function that otherwise cannot be served by traditional columns? Imagine if, instead of reading of some intrepid reporter’s thoughts on Iran as a long article, we received them in the form of a journal that came twice daily? One does not exclude the other: the short snippet will provide a closer look at a moment, the longer article a more complete reflection, and both are worthwhile for their own sake. Indeed, in the form of the news report, blogs have been around for several decades. We gain as much, in different ways, from these short visual reports as we do from longer documentaries; it is simply odd that the same should not apply to written reports.

Of course, the anti-blogger might still argue that a blog in the hands of a professional is a perfectly fine thing, but in the hands of an amateur it signals the end of civilization. This is an unsustainable assertion to make, if only because we would not have professional blogs if it were not for amateur ones. If you give people the technology to easily make their voice heard, there is little you can do to prevent it being used. The paper journalist’s reaction to this inevitable onslaught of amateurs is understandable in the context of the seemingly interminable decline of print newspapers, from which not even The New York Times is immune. All around us, ancient and august news-and-comment institutions are falling, and this is in large part due to Revolution 2.0. But one can hardly banish the internet from the face of the earth: what is necessary is a new model for newspapers, not a blind and thrashing, sweeping dismissal of the blogosphere.

Is there any reason why the “cult of the amateur” should be, in itself, a bad thing anyway? Large newspapers always have and always should require certain standards of expertise from their contributors, for obvious reasons: as soon as their credibility goes, their sales fall. Strictly in terms of business, this doesn’t apply to the individual blogger. It costs nothing to start, and therefore they have nothing to lose, apart from possibly their own time and effort, and that is, of course, their problem. Indeed, it usually takes a considerable amount of effort to get a blog to succeed at all. Thousands of blogs get started daily, only a tiny proportion of which have a readership of any considerable size. When they succeed, it is, on the whole, well-deserved. This is not necessarily because of its expertise or quality, but because of its ability to give the reader what he or she wants—and whether we like it or not, that is a cornerstone of our free market economy. It should be said that there are many paper publications that aren’t exactly known for expertise—take Hello or OK!—but they do give a certain readership what it wants. Faced with the choice, however, between highly professional trash and amateur political or philosophical material, we should choose the latter—but above all, we should have a choice.

This choice is not a malevolent influence on us, and it won’t skew our opinions horribly; we will never form all our opinions around those of bloggers. You can treat individual bloggers just as you would treat a person you meet: many people express their views on all sorts of issues on which they are not an expert, and we do not take them seriously merely because they are speaking. Why should anyone take a blogger seriously merely because they are writing? And why should we devalue experts merely because we can read what others have to say? Before blogs, we bought newspapers even while we heard the opinions of non-experts. After blogs, we will do the same.

The importance of blogging in a free society is obvious: if we are to have genuinely free speech, surely we must be able to communicate it to others, and if free speech is to be governed by anything (which it should be), in a world in which we are saturated with information, it must surely be supply and demand. But the importance of blogging is even more obvious in countries in which freedom of speech is barely tolerated. The immediate example is Iran. This present revolution, if it can be called that yet, has gained immensely more momentum from blogs and tweets than it could otherwise have dreamed of. From this perspective, the cliquey view of some newspaper columnists becomes positively sinister: how can it be possible to complain of the apparent newfound disrespect for expertise that has plagued us, if it means, in essence, shutting up the people of the world who most need a voice? Indeed, giving the people of all countries access to such resources, and overwhelming the censors and Great Firewalls of this world, may be the best way we have of destroying totalitarianism. How can we bemoan the lack of expertise, when such are the consequences?

Of course, we shouldn’t be too naive about blogging: it is not a magical panacea for all the ills of the world, and it won’t make us all more intelligent. For every genuinely good or useful blog there may be hundreds of worthless ones. In countries in which freedom of speech is taken for granted, we may overuse and underappreciate the value of blogs. We should view the blogosphere as a rugged, newly discovered land, ripe for exploration and mining, unrepresentative of the form it will take, and not indicative of the as yet untapped value it will one day bring. Voltaire is quoted as having said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” We take that view of the speakers in Speakers’ Corner; why not of blogs? They may be the contemporary equivalent of the “seditious, unreliable, unreasonable and unlicensed pamphlets” that Milton sought to defend in his Areopagitica. Luckily, in most parts of the world nobody is trying to ban them. But I suspect that if Milton were around now, he would be the first to stand up in their defence.