Arbitration & Mediation

Is this the end of blogging?

By Diane Levin

If you’re a member of either the legal or ADR blogging community (or both, like me, who stands with one foot in each of those worlds), maybe you’ve noticed it. Something feels different.

It’s like a funeral in here. Last week, Robert Ambrogi marked the passing of two popular blogs. David Giacalone, retired attorney and mediator, and the poet laureate of the legal blogging community, announced that he would stop blogging as of March 1, 2009. And the anonymous editor of Blawg Review, the high-quality review of legal blogging, wonders, “Is this the end?” with the publication of the 200th issue, prompting Dan Hull to invoke magic to prevent the death of this mighty blogging institution.

Among mediation bloggers, we’ve had a death in the family as well: one of the first of the mediation blogs, Mediation Mensch. And I’ve noticed less of the reciprocal linking, the luminous web of conversation weaving one blog to the next, and the robust debates we ignited. Increasingly it seems we are talking to ourselves alone here in the dark. The conversation has been outsourced to Twitter, the microblogging and instant messaging tool that is all the rage these days. But what happens to the quality of conversation in a place which limits messages to 140 characters?

Do these portents herald the end of blogging? Or is it just change, making way for the Next New Thing?

Full post as published by Online Guide to Mediation on February 24, 2009 (boomark / email).