4
Passage 1
The online news and commentary forums known as blogs (a term derived from "web log") are not only
more open than traditional media but are also a better arena for argument. Newspapers, magazines, and
broadcast media involve one-way communication from the originator of the content to the readers or
audience. To be sure, there are letters to the editor, but blogs are more fundamentally dialogic. Bloggers
are engaged in continual debate with each other. Many blogs also have comments sections, allowing
nonbloggers to join the conversation. The result is a much more freewheeling, egalitarian form of
communication than one finds in the traditional media.
Passage 2
In terms of how they treat substantive ideas, blogs are not very different from newspapers: they present
an idea and then move on, as quickly as possible, to the next idea. No one seems to be willing to chew
over even a very substantive blog entry for very long; instead, we want new ones. Blogs remain great for
presenting news: political, technological, artistic, whatever. But as vehicles for the development of ideas
they are woefully deficient and will necessarily remain so until they become less bound by the demands of
urgency. Even on the best academic sites, what happens more often than not is the conversion of really
good scholars into really lousy journalists.
Question
Compared with the author of Passage 1, the author of Passage 2 shows a greater concern about the
O probability that a blog will present inaccurate information
O dubious credentials of those who write in blogs
O need for a greater range of topics to be covered in blogs
O failure of blogs to explore ideas adequately
C
DELL