Stephen Baker at Blogspotting responded to my comment yesterday that journalists blogging about blogging "something like lunatics running the asylum." His blog entry is short, primarily linking to the comment he made on Get Real, here.

Instinctively I understand your point that we newcomers should sit back, read, study, and learn the customs before plunging in. That's the way we're taught to deal with new cultures, whether it's the school board or the Yanamami.

But then I started thinking about it, and I began to see that the world you're describing is peopled by insiders--cognoscenti--surrounded by newcomers (ie. us). And from the sound of it, our role is to sit quietly for a few weeks (months?)like children at the dinner table.

Here's the funny part. It seems to me that what you're describing, in effect, is a blog establishment that must be heeded. OK, maybe these rules and customs have evolved within a community. But a very similar process has occurred throughout history within societies and even religions. With time, establishments rise up and dictate those norms, which eventually become encrusted in law and liturgy.

Now I'm a newcomer, but isn't the mainstream media's sense of establishment one of the things that most irks outsiders?

Actually, my intent was to suggest something else: that journalists and others who are approaching the blogosphere as a part of their now-expanding profession duties -- like PR and communications professionals, product marketers, and CXOs of large corporations -- should begin by listening to the dialogue that is going on in the corner of the blogosphere relevant to them and their business goals:

[from my response to Steve's comment]

No, it's not so much an establishment, as a social context. It's not just the bloggers, it's the discussion that you need to get involved in between blggers and their communtiies. It's not that you need to sit at the table and be quiet for six months: by all means talk. But what many have done (and you are not) is just writing stuff at their blogs, and letting it fly. without becoming engaged in active communities.

I am not suggesting that journalists need to come and kiss the rings of bloggers; they need to get involved in what actual communities are talking about.

The broadcast model -- where the major pubs decide what's important, and so on -- is being replaced by participatory journalism. So smart journalists who are trying to report on it, will sensibly adopt more of the core principles of the blogosphere and not just the superficial elements -- like the bloggish time stamping that was used in the Businessweek front page piece recently.

The rationale for spending time reading before writing is just as much about learning what the involved readers of blogs care about as it is hearing what the bloggers are writing.

Never forget the readers. They contribute so much, and in this new journalism, they are contributors, just like the writers.

Stephen also let the cat out of the bag about my role and Corante's in the launch of the Blogspotting blog, that was timed to support the front page article on blogging in business. He is altogether too generous when he says "Full disclosure: Stowe worked with us here over the last month helping us set up this blog, and taught us much of what we know about blogging."

And, by they way, some of my best friends are lunatics.