There are a few interesting points in this article (and discussion) about the role of blogs. I have never wasted a moment of my life on thinking about what the role of this blog is, whether it is competition for photo magazines… well, OK, that was a lie - unlike most American photo magazines this weblog is not a glorified catalogue for the latest photo gizmos that throws in a few photos to keep some facade up; and I’m actually proud of that - even though it also means I’m not seeing any money for my efforts.

Money obviously - what glorious times we live in! - is one of the big criteria used for the arguments, even though I am very tempted to think that at least for a photographer there is more to the art than making money (easy to say if you don’t make one!). Which brings us to some sort of divide: There are blogs like this one, run by hapless amateurs, and blogs run by people who make every effort to tell their readers over and over again that they’re journalists. I guess the discussion mentioned above is more about the latter blogs.

However, I’d be more than willing to argue that many of us amateurs can easily compete with what the self-proclaimed pros have to offer. But in the end, the final decision rests with the reader; and boring the reader with long rants about the role of weblogs might not really be the best thing to do.