The Bourgeois Press

The Bourgeois press is a famous fallback position for those like Fidel Castro. Fidel when accused of running a government monopoly on the media often uses the concept of the bourgeois press to attack press freedom.

He says the press in the USA has all the freedom it wants but unless you own a press that freedom is meaningless. Blogs seem at first glance to have broken that barrier, but have they really?

I have a publication system here with virtually unlimited distribution possibilities. That is, I have a system with Blogger Beer that tops what traditional print media can do. However, someone (a blog critic recently points this out) notes that the biggest bloggers tend to come from traditional media, that it is those who write well who dominate the media. No dispute with the writing well part of it, but do all the bigs come from traditional media fields?

No they do not. Glenn Reynolds was not a journalist or chiefly a writer prior to his blog. Kos, Wretchard, Bill Roggio, Michael Yon and Charles Johnson also were not from the traditional media. Yes, you have to write well and have something to say but you don't have to be one of the hallowed of journalism to have a good blog.

So, no matter how big of a distribution channel you have good writing and having something to say still counts. The difference between then and now is internet publishing is so cheap, you don't have to write well to get published on it.